Get Ready, Here It Comes Again
So...Grover Norquist. He was never elected to anything, never served in any position of service to the people of this country. He's a lobbyist. And yet, the Republicans have made him probably the most powerful person in their party, and one of the most powerful in the country. You can't name a Republican that dares stand up to this guy, and any Republican who says anything that angers him issues a grovelling apology within days. So, what does this Grover Norquist have to say lately?
"Obama can sit there and let all the tax [cuts] lapse, and then the Republicans will have enough votes in the Senate in 2014 to impeach. The last year, he’s gone into this huddle where he does everything by executive order. He’s made no effort to work with Congress."
No effort to work with Congress. No effort to work with a pack of Republican mad dogs who have openly stated that their fondest desire is not to serve the country but to destroy him. Of course, he has bent over backwards to work with these people, who have also bent over backwards- to see that he can accomplish nothing.
And now, here it comes...impeachment. Did you think the Republicans would actually let Obama serve two terms as President without resorting to this miserable game again? Why would they, when the Democrats allowed them to pull this stunt last time without exacting a shred of accountability for the worst abuse of Congressional power in the history of the country?
Let's take a brief walk down history's byways, back to the nineties. From the time Bill Clinton was elected, the Republicans engaged in an endless campaign to brand him as a criminal. First, they took some absolutely normal investment he and Hillary had made, and spent tens of millions of dollars trying to represent this as a gigantic financial crime. When that didn't work, they absolutely went off the deep end and accused him of everything from being an international drug dealer, to a serial rapist, to being responsible for over fifty murders, many of them people he didn't have a thing to do with. Finally, all of these vicious smears having failed, the Republicans impeached him for a minor sexual impropriety, thus permanently and deliberately staining the image of a man who led the country through eight years of successful foreign policy while creating a budget surplus out of the gigantic debt left by the previous two Repubican presidents; and in the process they placed in office the worst president in our history.
Here, for those who hadn't figured this out long ago, is Clinton reminiscing:
I remember stating the obvious at the time: the Republicans were determined from the beginning to impeach Clinton, and spent six years finding an excuse to do it. When they couldn't actually manufacture any high crimes or misdemeanors, they did what they did, and if that hadn't worked they would have impeached him for jaywalking. When I would say this, I would be greeted with endless denials from those who just wouldn't face how anti-American the Republican party had become. Well, I was right then, and I'm right now when I talk about what they are planning, in case Obama defeats their corporate vulture and wins another term.
Well, back to Norquist:
"Obama can sit there and let all the tax [cuts] lapse, and then the Republicans will have enough votes in the Senate in 2014 to impeach. The last year, he’s gone into this huddle where he does everything by executive order. He’s made no effort to work with Congress."
Here's the new doctrine of the Republican party, straight from the mouth of its oracle- Impeachment 2.0. To hell with the Constitution. No longer is it necessary to even pretend that a Democratic president has done anything wrong in order to impeach him. Simply refusing to do exactly what Repubican lobbyists demand is enough. And anyone who thinks this is an idle threat, and that this is not exactly what will happen if the American people are stupid enough to give the Republicans a big enough majority in Congress, is a fool.
So, fasten your seat belts. This is what we have to look forward to if Obama wins reelection- a vicious, infantile display from the Republican party that will make the impeachment of Clinton look like a birthday party. And if, by any chance, they should succeed, the end of the United States in any form we can recognize.
"Obama can sit there and let all the tax [cuts] lapse, and then the Republicans will have enough votes in the Senate in 2014 to impeach. The last year, he’s gone into this huddle where he does everything by executive order. He’s made no effort to work with Congress."
No effort to work with Congress. No effort to work with a pack of Republican mad dogs who have openly stated that their fondest desire is not to serve the country but to destroy him. Of course, he has bent over backwards to work with these people, who have also bent over backwards- to see that he can accomplish nothing.
And now, here it comes...impeachment. Did you think the Republicans would actually let Obama serve two terms as President without resorting to this miserable game again? Why would they, when the Democrats allowed them to pull this stunt last time without exacting a shred of accountability for the worst abuse of Congressional power in the history of the country?
Let's take a brief walk down history's byways, back to the nineties. From the time Bill Clinton was elected, the Republicans engaged in an endless campaign to brand him as a criminal. First, they took some absolutely normal investment he and Hillary had made, and spent tens of millions of dollars trying to represent this as a gigantic financial crime. When that didn't work, they absolutely went off the deep end and accused him of everything from being an international drug dealer, to a serial rapist, to being responsible for over fifty murders, many of them people he didn't have a thing to do with. Finally, all of these vicious smears having failed, the Republicans impeached him for a minor sexual impropriety, thus permanently and deliberately staining the image of a man who led the country through eight years of successful foreign policy while creating a budget surplus out of the gigantic debt left by the previous two Repubican presidents; and in the process they placed in office the worst president in our history.
Here, for those who hadn't figured this out long ago, is Clinton reminiscing:
"I had a fascinating meeting with Bob Inglis the other day. Bob Inglis was an extremely conservative Republican congressman from South Carolina. He was a three-term-pledge guy in the nineties.... So he came to me and he said, "I just want you to know, when you got elected, I hated you. And I asked to be on the Judiciary Committee in 1993, because a bunch of us had already made up our minds that no matter what you did or didn't do, we were going to find some way to impeach you. We hated you. You had no right to be president."
I remember stating the obvious at the time: the Republicans were determined from the beginning to impeach Clinton, and spent six years finding an excuse to do it. When they couldn't actually manufacture any high crimes or misdemeanors, they did what they did, and if that hadn't worked they would have impeached him for jaywalking. When I would say this, I would be greeted with endless denials from those who just wouldn't face how anti-American the Republican party had become. Well, I was right then, and I'm right now when I talk about what they are planning, in case Obama defeats their corporate vulture and wins another term.
Well, back to Norquist:
"Obama can sit there and let all the tax [cuts] lapse, and then the Republicans will have enough votes in the Senate in 2014 to impeach. The last year, he’s gone into this huddle where he does everything by executive order. He’s made no effort to work with Congress."
Here's the new doctrine of the Republican party, straight from the mouth of its oracle- Impeachment 2.0. To hell with the Constitution. No longer is it necessary to even pretend that a Democratic president has done anything wrong in order to impeach him. Simply refusing to do exactly what Repubican lobbyists demand is enough. And anyone who thinks this is an idle threat, and that this is not exactly what will happen if the American people are stupid enough to give the Republicans a big enough majority in Congress, is a fool.
So, fasten your seat belts. This is what we have to look forward to if Obama wins reelection- a vicious, infantile display from the Republican party that will make the impeachment of Clinton look like a birthday party. And if, by any chance, they should succeed, the end of the United States in any form we can recognize.
Comments
The best you can hope for is Norquist is overly optimistic.
Hope first that Obama wins in November too... for any other outcome means everyone but a tiny handful of twisted people lose.
Catastrophically.