Andrew McCarthy, the author of Faithless Execution, wrote on Saturday in the National Review:
The nation overwhelmingly objects to Obama’s immigration lawlessness, but it has no stomach for the only effective counter to it — the plausible threat of impeachment.
The nation has no stomach for impeachment because impeachment was intended to prevent a President from committing crimes. The Constitution allows impeachment only for “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”
Impeachment was not intended as a tool to be used to shift the balance of power in favor of Congress.
As Elizabeth Holtzman, a member of the House Judiciary Committee during Watergate, writes in this month's Washington Spectator:
Impeachment proceedings that have no basis in fact or law simply show contempt for the Constitution, for democracy and for the American people.
McCarthy wants to use impeachment to "bend the president into compliance" with the minority that elected a Republican congress.
Here's what I think is really going on.
The Republican strategy for winning the mid-terms (hide the crazy!) worked. The Republican Party devoted religious attention to making sure their candidates didn't state their actual beliefs. The narrative they promoted in the general election was also that the Republican Party had beat back Tea Party challengers in the primaries.
This strategy succeeded so well that Joni Ernst, a conspiracy theorist who believes in Agenda 21, was elected to the Senate from Iowa.
Now, the question is, will the crazy emerge after the election?
I don't think it will. I believe Republicans have their eyes on 2016 with the same strategy that they used to win in the mid-terms.
I think the last thing they want is an impeachment fight.
Sure, it would rile up the party faithful. But the party faithful isn't who won the mid-term election for Republicans. Winning independents with their new "We're not crazy!" strategy won the mid-term elections for Republicans.
Notice the edge of 54% to 42% in voters who self-identify as independent. Voters who identify as Republicans or Democrats are relatively equal in how they voted.
Last night over dinner, I was talking with my in-laws about John McCain and his new book: Soldiers. When McCain spoke on NPR about the book, he sounded thoughtful, introspective, and independent. This is the John McCain they liked. The John McCain they didn't like is the one who chose Sarah Palin as a Vice Presidential candidate.
My in-laws tend to be pretty middle-of-the-road. They like the Tea Party crazies about as much as they like what they see as "liberals". They genuinely want to see more moderation and what they think of as less extremism from both parties.
And yes, I know that they're buying the media narrative of false equivalence between the two parties. The point here is that an impeachment fight would damage Republicans' own false equivalence narrative.
This is why I believe all the impeachment talk is a bluff meant to keep the base happy. Sure, McCarthy wants it to happen (he also sold a few books along the way), but I don't believe the people who won the mid-terms for Republicans want it to happen.
This is why, if I were President Obama, I would take the threat for what I believe it is, a bluff.
An impeachment fight would raise questions about democracy and in the words of Elizabeth Holtzman "undo what was decided at the ballot box" (full piece at The Washington Spectator).
It would also unleash the crazy.
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David Akadjian is the author of The Little Book of Revolution: A Distributive Strategy for Democracy.