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High crimes and misdemeanors
How impeachment could save the Republican party
2004.06.15 — Government | George W Bush | Campaign 2004 | by Barton Castor
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One of these men could be president next year. Only one. |
It's not too late to impeach George W Bush. I know it sounds like a lefty plot to get revenge for the impeachment of Bill Clinton, but it just might save the GOP. President Bush has, let's face it, let down the party.
Despite his sensible tax cuts that got the economy rolling out of its Clinton hangover, I can't brook Bush's foreign-policy failures and appalling buck-passing. He has betrayed the party with a neo-conservative strategy of pre-emption, lowered our standing in the world, and risked America's future security by failing to focus on the destruction of al Qaeda and Usama bin Laden. Dick Cheney's not so hot either. Impeaching George W Bush might be the only way the Republican party can keep the White House.
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Impeaching George W Bush might be the only way the Republican party can keep the White House. |
It's a cinch that the Democratic leadership in Congress would happily impeach the president and vice-president. They would hang their heads and spout platitudes about the grave decision to do so, all the while chuckling gleefully to themselves and, out of sight of the cameras, slapping each other on the back and toasting Bill Clinton's sweet revenge. But by going along and impeaching Bush and Cheney, the Republican party has a chance of starting fresh by replacing them with a team that can win, come November.
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[Dems] would hang their heads and spout platitudes..., all the while... toasting Bill Clinton's sweet revenge. |
John McCain would be a formidable opponent for John Kerry. Heck, even Kerry thinks he would be a great chief exec. His war record goes Kerry's one better and erases the embarrassment of the Bush-Cheney records. His politics are conservative (what a surprise Dems would have got if Kerry had gotten his way!), sensible, and palatable to the mainstream. He's eloquent (and the clips of Reagan make me long for that) and personable. He's a perfect president. It's a shame we didn't pick him in the first place.
But the only way McCain can win the nomination is if Bush is out of the picture. No loyal Republican would abandon a ship that was only rumored to be sinking. The way to save this party—and to save American conservative politics from the likes of John Kerry—is to show George W Bush and Dick Cheney the door.
Proving a case against them wouldn't be hard. The Abu Ghraib scandal and its related prisoner abuse guidelines memos are nearly enough, but Bush has also given us cause for action in his pre-war behavior: focusing on Iraq with 9/11 as an excuse and purposely mixing them up in the public mind, presenting shaky WMD intelligence to Congress and the UN, funding the liar Ahmad Chalabi to the tune of $39 million. And don't forget his post-war behavior of denying knowledge of the prison abuse and allowing Ambassador Joseph Wilson's CIA-operative wife to be illegally revealed. The lawyers could dig up a few more misdemeanors, but those high crimes will do. We don't need an $80 million investigation to agree that Junior has got to go.
I know the president didn't do all this himself personally. And Nixon didn't break into the Watergate himself either.
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Cheney will beg off for his heart condition.... Nobody would believe that he wanted to spend more time with his family anyway. |
A bit of pressure from the Republican leadership would convince the president to announce his early retirement. No sitting president wants to be publicly rejected by his party. "I want to spend more time with Laura and the girls," he'll say. Cheney will beg off for his heart condition, of course. Nobody would believe that he wanted to spend more time with his family anyway.
Putting McCain on the ticket would disarm the anybody-but-Bush crowd and give conservatives a port in this storm of controversy over Bush the Younger's secretive, unilateral administration. The religious right would likely be happy put its support behind McCain and avoid messy discussions about decidedly un-Christian torture and cronyism. Even many fence-sitters and conservative Democrats, disgusted by John Kerry's pompous monotone and flip-flopism, would gratefully hop on the McCain bandwagon. Even John Kerry would be vindicated—how can you object if your pick for veep wins the presidency, right? In short, everybody wins.
Except George W Bush.
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