Playing The Impeachment Card

REPUBLICANS learned an important lesson in 1998. Americans don’t want their president impeached. They figure that they voted for the guy. Now let him do his stuff.

Back then the MSM, or plain media as it was then, was delighted to tell the Republicans what Clinton-hating Puritans they were. And so, in accordance with the constitution, two Republicans had to resign to pay for Democrat Bill Clinton’s lie: “I did not have sex with that woman, Ms Lewinsky.”

That was then, this is now. Back then, the sense of annoyance that Republicans felt towards Bill Clinton was considered rather shabby and unattractive by the media. Today the spluttering rage of Democrats over President Bush is shared by the MSM. They hate the guy, just as Al Gore taught them to hate back in November 2000 when he decided to contest the Florida election.

Their boiling hatred is the energy that Senator Russ Feingold wants to exploit in his motion to censure the president. He hopes his motion will energize the left-wing netroots as he cranks up his run for the presidency in 2008. Elect Democrats to Congress, he seems to say, and we will impeach the president.

As The Wall Street Journal writes in an editorial, Feingold is doing us all a favor, and especially Republicans, by pushing his censure motion. He is telling us what a Democratic Congress would want to do if the voters elected one this Fall.

He's doing voters a favor by telling them before November's election just how Democrats intend to treat a wartime President if they take power.
Not only do they want to block his policies, they also plan to rebuke and embarrass him in front of the world and America's enemies.

Even The New York Times can see that there is a problem. Reporter David D. Kirkpatrick notes that the censure talk could work to the Republicans’ advantage. But don’t worry about impeachment:

Few lawmakers in either party think there is much chance of impeachment even if the Democrats do take the House. Carl Forti, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, called the idea "not realistic" but nonetheless useful. "It shows people how extreme the leaders of the Democrat Party actually are," Mr. Forti said.

Nobody here but us chickens, eh?

Back in 1960 Richard Nixon decided not to contest the close election that was probably stolen in the Democratic machine bastions of Illinois (Dick Daley, prop.) and Texas (Lyndon Johnson, prop.). He thought it would be too divisive.

In 2000 Al Gore elected to contest the close election in Florida, and ginned up his supporters up with divisive partisan rhetoric. When his effort was put down by the U.S. Supreme Court he conceded only grudgingly, and his supporters understood that the attacks on the president could continue.

Ever since the Democrats have been paying for his bad faith. Because when you divide America into conservatives and liberals it turns out that that the conservatives win.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.