{"id":6159,"date":"2005-12-22T15:43:00","date_gmt":"2005-12-22T20:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6159"},"modified":"2005-12-22T15:43:00","modified_gmt":"2005-12-22T20:43:00","slug":"the-oddities-of-the-i-word-discussion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-oddities-of-the-i-word-discussion\/","title":{"rendered":"The oddities of the ‘I-word’ discussion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Putting aside the question over whether the president will or should be impeached, the media coverage of the “I word” discussion has been a little odd. It’s as if news outlets want to talk about it, but are afraid to, so they mention it with a certain detachment, essentially discussing the discussion<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ron Hutcheson, White House correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers (known as “Hutch” to the president), observed that “some legal experts asserted that Bush broke the law on a scale that could warrant his impeachment.” Indeed such talk from legal experts was common in print or on cable news.<\/p>\n

Newsweek online noted a “chorus” of impeachment chat, and its Washington reporter, Howard Fineman, declared that Bush opponents are “calling him Nixon 2.0 and have already hauled forth no less an authority than John Dean to testify to the president’s dictatorial perfidy. The ‘I-word’ is out there, and, I predict, you are going to hear more of it next year — much more.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Indeed, it’s everywhere. Just today, Salon had a big piece<\/a> on the issue and GW law prof Jonathan Turley had a USA Today op-ed<\/a> mentioning it, which comes the same week as two fairly high-profile Dem members of Congress raised the specter<\/a> of the “I word” publicly. CNN’s Jack Cafferty<\/a> has mentioned it, as has Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter<\/a>. Conservative scholars are even discussing the merit of impeachment on NPR<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Media pollsters, however, won’t touch it. Why? Because, they say, it’s not an issue of serious discussion<\/a>.
\n<\/p>\n

A smattering of polls (some commissioned by partisan groups) has found considerable, if minority, support for impeachment. But Frank Newport, the director of the Gallup Poll, told E&P recently that he would only run a poll on the subject if the idea really started to gain mainstream political traction, and not until then. […]<\/p>\n

When Washington Post pollster Richard Morin finally answered the “I” question in his online chat, he said, “We do not ask about impeachment because it is not a serious option or a topic of considered discussion — witness the fact that no member of congressional Democratic leadership or any of the serious Democratic presidential candidates in ’08 are calling for Bush’s impeachment. When it is or they are, we will ask about it in our polls.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I disagree with this approach, but I have to admit, I find it fascinating.<\/p>\n

The comments from the Gallup pollster, in particular, are striking. In order for them to poll on the issue, it would have to “gain mainstream political traction,” which it might if Gallup fielded a poll on the issue. It’s circular reasoning at its most irritating.<\/p>\n

Lawmakers are talking about impeachment, as are reporters, scholars, and activists. And if media professionals used Clinton-era standards<\/a>, pollsters would not only be discussing it, but we’d know the extent to which the public is too.<\/p>\n

Like it or not, as Digby noted<\/a>, impeachment “is on the table.” There doesn’t seem to be much point in pretending otherwise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Putting aside the question over whether the president will or should be impeached, the media coverage of the “I word” discussion has been a little odd. It’s as if news outlets want to talk about it, but are afraid to, so they mention it with a certain detachment, essentially discussing the discussion. Ron Hutcheson, White […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6159\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}