The GOP’s Backdoor Impeachment Scheme

[cali]

Republicans have lost at the ballot box and the Supreme Court, so they’ve decided to nullify President Obama another way: keep his government from working, period.

The dance over the debt ceiling and the fight over the government shutdown are nothing less than impeachment on the cheap: a chance to negate the will of the majority by ostensibly placating the letter of the law. Unable to win the last two presidential elections or to persuade a Supreme Court majority that the Affordable Care Act was unconstitutional, House Republicans have arrived at a point where default and closure are the next best things. This combustible brew of race, class, and economic anxieties bubbles all too closely to the surface.

These days, the GOP comes across as hating Obamacare more than loving their countrymen, and the nation is returning that ire (PDF). Less than a quarter of Americans view the Republicans favorably, and a majority dislikes them, three-in-10 intensely. The GOP’s goal of recapturing the Senate in 2014 is now looking more like a dream than a reality, as Republicans are “forced to explain why they are not to blame and why Americans should trust them to govern both houses of Congress when the one they do run is in such disarray.” Indeed.

Unfortunately, the calamity of a potential default has tempered neither judgment nor passion. On Saturday, Ted Cruz—the man who lit the match, won the Values Voters Straw Poll with 42 percent of the vote. Channeling her inner Glenn Beck, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) concluded that the President “committed impeachable offenses.” Bachmann also proclaimed that civil disobedience was a potential response to Obama’s “thuggery,” and compared the Obama presidency to Egypt’s deposed Muslim Brotherhood.

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/10/14/the-gop-s-backdoor-impeachment-scheme.html

[Skidmore]

1. As I read through threads of this type today, the one thing that comes to mind is

to question why are there not public demonstrations of support for the president and our Dems and Independents. I see plenty of Teabaggers out there raising hell and disseminating disinformation and outright lies.

Lord, I really feel stressed by this. We just got back from my only son's wedding, a trip halfway across the nation and for which we had planned and tried to save for since January. It was an expensive trip for us and now we still need to pay a small amount of the expenses off. In the meantime, if this default happens, our income will plunge by a third or even more if my husband's job takes a sideblow. He's two years away from retirement. Our retirement funds are vested and have yo-yoed all over the place. Will they even exist down the line? Will our meager life insurance policies be honored? Will we even be able to sell our lone asset--our house?

Thus far the anger is all ginned up against not being able to go to public parks. It's not calling attention to the workers who lost their jobs but just the theatre of people who want to present a jingoistic formulation of deprivation for not being able to have their needs for self-gratification met instantaneously.

Perhaps this is not the right thread to address these concerns in. I don't know. I just know that there is impeachment skullduggery and much, much more at stake...and all the clamour appears to be from the right.

[2naSalit]

2. I agree with your

concerns. I live near a couple NPs and all the mom/pop businesses are closed or staying open at a cost, all employees are laid off with not much access to unemployment ins either. I am one of those.

Perhaps some of the reasons there are none of us out marching in streets:

1) we have been beaten down to such a degree of poverty that we can't afford to leave the house/apt. if we have one to call home

2) the last numerous demonstrations ended up with brutal action from the corporate cops that end up costing us dearly in physical damages like broken teeth and bones and fees to get out of jail and attorneys and the pepper spray thing and travel is becoming more difficult and costly for those of us who object to what's being done. Hell, Idaho just got two tanks from the pentagon for quelling and dissent.

3) once we have been arrested for civil disobedience, all that piles up and you get "followed" wherever you go...

All that adds up, and when we see that the nutjobs can pull stunts like they have been this past two weeks, this weekend in particular, and nothing happens except tons of media coverage where they get to say what they want to say... our side gets beaten to the ground with billy clubs and tear gassed and no coverage to have our say... gets hard to justify the cost after a time. it's disheartening and these bastards are going to ramrod our government and our lives such that they can have their fascist world... it sucks and the feds needs to get a spine and do something about them, that's what we pay and vote for, protection form this kind of crap, and I don't anyone doing that.

They might scream impeachment but the ones who need to be impeached and removed from office are the screamers.

[Coyotl]

3. Shut down the GOP

[msanthrope]

4. They tried this with President Clinton. This time, we need more party unity to deal with

the aftermath in the 2016 election.