As a rule, I find talk about impeaching Bush to be an occasionally fun diversion, but little more. The focus for Bush’s critics should be on curtailing his agenda and winning as many elections as possible in November. With a Republican Congress, plotting the president’s removal from office seems largely unproductive.<\/p>\n
But since the Sunday Discussion Group is often a useful forum for unrealistic thought experiments, let’s give this a go: if Dems were<\/i> in power, should impeachment be a serious consideration? Don’t answer too quickly; there are some pros and cons to consider.<\/p>\n
Taking up the con side recently was the estimable Ezra Klein, who made a compelling case<\/a> that a) impeaching Bush would give us President Cheney, who would help choose an heir apparent for ’08; b) voters may not perceive impeachment as absolutely necessary, which could cause voters to punish Dems the way they punished Newt & Co. for Clinton’s impeachment in ’98; and c) if impeachment becomes a routine second-term response to political scandals, it may permanently undermine institutional government. Sam Rosenfeld touched on<\/a> similar concerns Thursday.<\/p>\n Shortly thereafter, Pandagon’s jedmunds suggested<\/a> a) Cheney could probably be impeached right along with Bush; and b) assumptions about an electoral backlash are unfounded; and c) the ’98 comparison is unhelpful because the circumstances are so different. jedmunds nevertheless concludes that the Republicans took a “frivolous and irresponsible” approach to impeachment when it came to Clinton, so Dems “should be really really timid about the matter, and in fact they should be so cautious, that they shouldn’t do it, even if most people think it would be a good idea.”<\/p>\n And taking up the matter-of-fact approach is Lindsay Beyerstein, who argued<\/a>, “An impeachment is like an indictment. People who have a lot of evidence against them deserve to be indicted. Whether their cases are heard before a grand jury (or the Senate) shouldn’t depend on whether it’s expeditious to enforce the law in this particular case.”<\/p>\n The issue is also generating attention and analysis from liberal news outlets such as The Nation<\/a> and The Texas Observer<\/a>.<\/p>\n So, what say you? Is impeachment a pipe dream? A serious part of the Dem agenda? An issue that should play a role in the 2006 elections?<\/p>\n Discuss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As a rule, I find talk about impeaching Bush to be an occasionally fun diversion, but little more. The focus for Bush’s critics should be on curtailing his agenda and winning as many elections as possible in November. With a Republican Congress, plotting the president’s removal from office seems largely unproductive. But since the Sunday […]<\/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-6472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6472","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=6472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6472\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}