Republicans took aim at winning a Senate majority in the 2014 midterms early last year, and as of this writing are the odds-on favorite to achieve their aim. The reward: impeachment.
A group has been working right-of-ways in front of shopping centers and the local post office for months with cardboard signs advertising an impeach Obama petition and harassing language for those who walk by with their heads bowed trying to ignore them and avoid the uncomfortable confrontation that is bound to ensue. And they look the part: wild-eyed true believers who betray their deep-seated belief that our president was actually born in Kenya, really is a socialist who hates America, and is otherwise entirely guilty of more high crimes and misdemeanors than the average math-hating American could possibly count.
Which brings us to a GOP-majority Senate, to be empaneled and empowered in January. Along with the GOP-majority House, whatever are they to do to pass the time between the midterms and the 2016 election cycle?
With history as our guide, we look back to the second term of the last Democratic president, Bill Clinton. Who was impeached for misleading the public about getting hummers in the Oval Office. Nobody is alleging anything of that nature against Obama, whose crimes are political, using executive orders (though many less than Ronald Reagan) to get around the do-nothing Congress and, well, being Obama.
In case you missed it, America is now in a permanent election cycle, so even as we’re in the final countdown to the 2014 midterms, the 2016 presidential has been shaping up since karl rove argued with Megyn Kelly about whether or not Obama actually won Ohio the second time. The endless run of political posturing disguised as congressional investigations of the Obama administration will fire up within milliseconds of the new Congress being sworn in.
The inevitable conclusion to the hearings ad nauseam is impeachment. Logically, you can’t waste the public’s time and attention and Fox News Channel’s adept bloviating without impeachment as the endgame.
And yes, I said endgame there. Impeachment, of course, is not removal from office; no one would really expect there to be two-thirds of the Senate, the 51 Republicans plus 16 Democrats, ready to thrown Obama under the bus for political expediency. No one expected the Senate to remove Clinton from office in 1998. And that one, the Clinton impeachment, nearly backfired spectacularly against the GOP, giving Democrats a boost in the 1998 midterms, leading to a too-close-to-call race for the White House in 2000.
Given the choice, Republicans refer to their playbook on these kinds of matters, and the playbook calls for the firebomb, scorched earth, napalm anybody and everybody in the way and on the periphery.
It’s going to be thermonuclear war the next 12 months or so, when the attention will turn fully to Hillary Clinton, who did get an eight-year reprieve from having her name, reputation and psyche dragged through the crapfest that Obama has had to endure daring to be a Democrat who could be and was elected president.
Strap yourself in for the fun that is to ensue
– Column by Chris Graham
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