Tag: Impeachment

Poll Finds 64% Tea Party Support for Impeaching Pres. Obama

Jon Ponder

graph-gop-ready-to-impeach

A poll from Democracy Corps found that the Republican base supports impeaching Pres. Obama by a two-to-one margin. The poll did not ask what high crime or misdemeanor tea partyists believe the president is guilty of, but presumably it is “presidenting while black.”

Congressional tea party boss Ted Cruz routinely bullied House Speaker John Boehner, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and other GOP leaders in the 113th Congress into pursuing unpopular actions, chiefly including shutting down the government. Polls like this one suggest that it’s more likely than not that Boehner, McConnell, now the incoming majority leader in the Senate, and the rest will be cowed by Cruz — whose extremist caucus will have at least six new members in the Senate — into proceeding with impeachment in the 114th Congress.

Watch Rachel Maddow’s interview with the pollster, Stan Greenberg, HERE.

Fox Anchor Rips Michele Bachmann on Impeachment: ‘An Enormous Waste of Time’

Jon Ponder

Less than a week after a Foxbot reminded Dick Cheney that, “Time and time again, history has proven that you got it wrong as well in Iraq, sir,” Fox talking head Neil Cavuto blasted tea party Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) on his show last night after she called for impeaching the president:

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Contrary to GOP/Tea Party Spin, Pres. Obama Has Issued Fewer Than 200 Executive Orders – Bush, Who Had a ‘Rubberstamp Congress,’ Issued 291

Jon Ponder

In a gambit to lay the groundwork for impeachment, the GOP leadership has announced plans to sue Pres. Obama on grounds that he has abused his authority by issuing executive orders to implement policies.

In their single terms in office, Republican presidents Theodore Roosevelt issued 1,081 EOs, Calvin Coolidge issued 1,203 orders and Herbert Hoover issued 968. Richard Nixon issued 346 EOs in his five years in office, and tea-party patron saint Ronald Reagan issued 381 executive orders during his two terms.

In support of the lawsuit, the usual suspects on the right have been making outrageous claims about the number of executive orders the president has issued — the most extravagant of which asserts that he’s issued more than 900 so-called EOs. The actual number is much lower, fewer than 200, so far. By contrast, George W. Bush signed 291 EOs.

Not surprisingly, the U.S. president who issued the most executive orders was Franklin Roosevelt, a Democrat who served four terms. Republican presidents have issued more than their share of EOs, too, of course. In their single terms, Republicans Theodore Roosevelt issued 1,081 EOs, Calvin Coolidge issued 1,203 orders and Herbert Hoover issued 968. Richard Nixon issued 346 EOs in his five years in office, and tea-party patron saint Ronald Reagan issued 381 executive orders during his two terms.

The chart below shows the exact numbers for all presidents going back to 1901. To see a complete list going back to Pres. Washington, visit the American Presidency Project.

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Sen. Tom Coburn Says Pres. Obama Is ‘Perilously Close’ To Being Impeached

Jon Ponder

Coburn
Frustrated that they haven’t been able to beat Pres. Obama fairly and squarely, the Republican Party’s base is signalling it is ready to initiate its gambit-of-last-resort and commence impeachment proceedings against Obama.

They can’t say yet what high crimes and misdemeanors the president has committed, but they are sure that if Chairman Issa will just keep looking, he’ll find something. The other obstacle is that they need to both keep the House and take the Senate next year, a prospect that appears likely.

Impeachment has come up in a few Republican congressional town halls during the summer recess. Texas Tea Party Sen. Ted Cruz is on board, of course, as are a couple of hard-core nobodies in the House. The new wrinkle is that now Oklahoma GOP Sen. Tom Coburn — who the DC punditocracy insists is a reasonable fellow — jumped on the bandwagon. He told a room full of constituents that Pres. Obama is “getting perilously close” to having committed an impeachable offense:

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Fox Legal Expert Suggests Obama Could Be Impeached over the Sequester – Even Though It Was Voted into Law with 202 Republican Votes

Jon Ponder

Fox News legal analyst Andrew Napiltano suggested yesterday that Pres. Obama could be impeached over the sequester:

“This is almost an impeachable offense,” Napolitano [said]. “If the president is deciding how to spend money in order to hurt us, rather than in order to provide us with the services for which we have paid and for which we have hired him, he is doing the opposite of what he has taken an oath to do.”

“He has taken an oath to uphold the laws. That means make the government work. Don’t make it painful, find a way to make it work on 2 percent less.”

The former judge concluded: “That’s the way the constitution works!”

What this Fox legal expert deliberately pretends to ignore, of course, is that impeachment over the sequester would put holdovers among the 174 Republicans in the House and 28 Republicans in the Senate who voted for the sequester in the 112th Congress in a very awkward position. In particular, it would make a majority of House Republicans complicit in the president’s “crime.”

Second Congressman Suggests Obama Impeachment

Buck Banks

It is one of those times in our history, we are at this breaking point. We have completely lost our checks and balances in this country, the Congress needs to hold the president accountable for the decisions that he’s making right now, and that why again, I would say that all options should be on the table.

— Rep. Trey Radel (R-FL), telling The Shark Tank that President Obama could be impeached over his executive actions on gun control.

Pelosi Inadvertently Admits Her Second Greatest Missed Opportunity

Jon Ponder

I could have arrested Karl Rove on any given day. I’m not kidding. There’s a prison here in the Capitol … If we had spotted him in the Capitol, we could have arrested him.

— House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) reacting to Speaker John Boehner’s plan to call a vote on a contempt citation for Attorney General Eric Holder over charges related to the Republicans’ bogus Fast & Furious scandal, and inadvertently naming the second-greatest missed opportunity of of her tenure as House speaker — the first being her decision to take the impeachment of George W. Bush “off the table.”