Musing's Musings breaks the bad news:
"The sad and simple facts of the matter are these. It takes a simple majority in the House to impeach. I don't think we have the votes to make that happen. There are almost certainly Democrats who would refuse to vote articles of impeachment, and I don't believe there are enough Republicans who would agree to do so to tip the balance in our favor. But even if we assume, argumentis causa, that we could get an impeachment in the House, there's no way on earth or in heaven that we'd be able to round up the 67 votes we'd need to convict in the Senate. Let me remind everybody that we have a one-seat majority in the upper chamber, and that by courtesy of Holy Joe Lieberman, who is only Bush's favorite Democrat-in-name-only in the whole wide world. Think he'd vote with us to convict? I think he'd be more likely to order a Whopper rare in the middle of Passover than to vote to convict Bush of anything more serious than failing to slip him a little tongue the last time he kissed him. (And if you'll pardon me for a moment, I need to go find a bit of mental Clorox to get that image out of my head.) Here, too, I think we'd have a hard enough time getting all the Democrats to vote with us, let alone attracting enough Republicans to get to the two-thirds majority prescribed by the Constitution."
2 comments:
Momentum is building, we'll get the house. 2/3rds vote in the Senate to remove Bush from office will happen once the evidence gets aired on the floor of the House, and subsequently the national media outlets. The political pressure will become too great.
Republican Congress members will realize that tying their political future to Bush reduces their chances of getting elected. Remember, one way or another, Bush is gone by 2009— but members of Congress may retain their offices beyond that date. Bush's poll numbers are extremely low, and most Americans support impeachment. This is a bipartisan movement. This means that if we make the pressure unbearable for Members of Congress, they'll turn on him to keep their own seats (like they did with Nixon). It's already starting to happen. While many Members of Congress have behaved unethically in the last few years, it's important to understand that this is related to their warped view of what's in their self-interest. Let's wake them up to their true self-interest (impeaching the president), by showing them our support for impeachment.
And even if we only impeach, and the Senate fails to do their duty and remove him from office, it will only implicate the Senators who fail to do their sworn Constitutional duty.
It would really be lovely to see Bush trying to explain himself in an impeachment proceedings or even at the Hague, but I believe the powers that be will move glacially with the investigations. Bush will be out of office and long gone to Paraguay and Cheney will have gone to ground before the real crimes are exposed.
But we will write new laws and add chapters to our history books that will make it harder for such men to occupy the highest offices in the land and do the evil that they did.
The worst president in history will be carved deep on Bush's egg-splattered tombstone.
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