Newt: Let's Go Impeachin'!

So, does Obama's continuing most of the same programs legitimize them in your eyes or does it open him up to impeachment?

It's got to be one or the other.

You can't want to impeach Bush, but excuse Obama for the very same programs.

 

Pretty funny that the same people who ridicule "the left" for supposedly obsessing over Bush don't have any problem pulling out ol' Dubya when it suits their needs.

 

Newt's conversion to Catholicism is the least of his problems, even with the religious right. This country is well past the point where being Catholic, as opposed to Protestant, is going to be a hindrance. This isn't 1960 anymore. Newt's two divorces, and the fact that he served one of his ex-wives with divorce papers while she was in Stage 4 of Cancer, will be far harder for him to live down.

Now Mitt Romney, and his being a Mormon, could, unfortunately, be another matter. Though even there, I think Romney's more moderate positions as Governor of Massachusetts and his institution of a health care reform play all-too-similar to Obama's will be far more of a hindrance for him in the primary than the version of Christianity he practices.

 

People here are acting like it's a mainstream Republican position to be calling for the impeachment of Obama. That's false.

There will always be some that will try to make a case for impeachment against any President.

And just as many -- or more -- on the left tried to make the case against Bush as are currently tryin to make the case against Obama from the right.

But, you'll probably either choose to ignore, deny, or defend that rather than just admit it.

 

Impossible to dispute, and no one's saying otherwise. One of my long-held favorite points on this board relates to his cancer divorce.

Yeah, Newt, no way you should be tethered to such a hindrance.

God. I may vomit.

 

And once again we see the danger of making assumptions, YF. Of course there were people on the left who talked of impeaching Bush.

I wasn't one of them. As far as if there were "as many or more" on the left ... don't know, don't care. But if you want to look it up and find some facts to back up your as-yet unsupported assertion, knock yourself out. I won't be holding my breath.

Sometimes, your little black-and-white, left-and-right world ain't so black-and white or left-and-right. And you don't know as much as you think you do.

Try again.

 

I think that this whole fiasco is just Newt jumping up and down and yelling, "Hey look at me! I'm relevant! Really, I am!"

Newt.
John Edwards.
Al Gore.
Donald Trump.
Ron Paul.

Heck, the list of politicians with so much baggage that they can't be elected president is long.

Even longer if you add entertainers such as Sarah Palin.

 

So are you saying that two impeachments in a row, under any circumstances, shouldn't happen -- meaning that Obama could do as he damned well pleases, constitution be damned, without consequence? It almost seems that way.

 

When Newt once said we weren't productive enough so we needed to work more than 50-60 hours a week, he lost me. He probably averages 20.

 

Impeachment isn't about crimes. It's always been a political process, a weapon for one side to use. That's why they required two votes when they put it into place -- one to impeach, another to remove from office. The Founders knew it would be too tempting for people on one side to vote guys out just because they didn't like something they did. The only two times it was actually used it was more over politics than anything that could reasonably fall under the heading of "high crimes and misdemeanors." If either case had been argued in a court of law rather than a political setting, neither man would likely have been impeached.

 

The one place where the Founding Fathers screwed up was where they made it too easy to impeach in the House, as opposed to convict in the Senate.

Impeachment requires only a majority vote (50% plus one) on any article in the House. Of course, it takes a two-thirds majority in the Senate to remove a president, and it's possible even Nixon could've skated on this, although he saved us the trouble by resigning.

We could've been saved the trouble of sitting through that dog-and-pony show Newt left in Hastert's lap in 1999 if that higher bar had been in place.

 

Did you read my first sentence? I said "Unless Obama does something blatantly criminal." You know, such as knowing about his men breaking into the opposition's headquarters, then trying to cover up the crime. Something serious like that. Not "We don't agree with what he's doing, so let's impeach him!"

Constitutionally, they could try to claim he was circumventing it any whichways, which is what some of them are doing now when he said the government wouldn't defend DOMA. They could also claim that, if he pushed for some gun control law, that he's trying to get rid of the Second Amendment. Heck, you still have the wackos who feel he's going around the Constitution because they question his birth certificate.

But those are parts of the Constitution that are open for interpretation. Now, if he decided to bring out the army to shoot at peaceful protestors, that'd be something else. That's what I mean by blatantly criminal.

Otherwise, if the GOP attempted another impeachment on flimsy grounds (such as lying about sex life under oath), people would start to wonder if the GOP would impeach every single Democratic president, if the GOP wasted another impeachment on Obama.

Impeachment should be reserved for the most serious offenses, not to settle a political score. That's what the GOP was trying to do when they impeached Clinton.