In the face of so many scandals and cover-ups, impeachment is no longer unthinkable or politically incorrect. Clearly, the pattern of lawlessness and obstructionism exhibited by this Administration has reached a crescendo of seriousness not seen since Watergate, and sooner rather than later the tide toward impeachment may well be unstoppable.
As President Ford iterated, and as clearly explained by our Founders, an impeachable offense is whatever Congress says it is; thus, the bar for impeachment is as low or as high as we, through our representatives in the House, say it is.
Bearing in mind that impeachment is a political--not a legal--process, given the growing groundswell of acute opposition to the Obama Regime's arrogance and overreach, we may well be reaching that point at which the House will be compelled to invoke articles of impeachment against a chief executive who continues to ruthlessly flout the Rule of Law, circumvent Congress, and violate Art II of the Constitution.
As a purely practical political matter, however, without a 2/3 majority in the Senate to convict and remove, successfully impeaching Obama or any of his henchmen, either of which requires only a majority in the House, would be little more than symbolic and would do nothing to effectively arrest the heavy-handed inclinations of the White House and its equally imperialistic bureaucratic realm.
Bearing in mind that in the alternate universe called government political equations almost invariably trump principle, my guess is that this is why Speaker Boehner is reluctant to proceed with impeachment. He's calculating that the negative political fallout stemming from a dead-end impeachment-conviction process would very likely adversely affect GOP political fortunes going forward. And this is something he wants to avoid at nearly any cost. He knows that the highly effective Liberal sound bite machine would quickly characterize the impeachment action as little more than needlessly disruptive GOP "grand-standing" and "obstructionism". Thus, for better or for worse, in the bizarro world called government where realities are dictated by whether or not one is able to retain one's political power, until the GOP captures a safe 2/3 majority in the Senate impeachment is a non-starter.
That said, the fact that there is such a widespread and growing push for impeachment indicates a republic in disarray and crisis. Unquestionably, our Republic is in greater danger from iniquitous forces from within than we've ever known in our history. How successfully we handle this unprecedented crisis and the threats which face us remains to be seen.
For the moment, the GOP is relying on the courts, often themselves at odds with the Constitution, to checkmate a runaway Executive Branch. At the grassroots level, the People are exercising their right to resist by peacefully blocking buses and standing up to BLM. But, if all those efforts fail to restore the Rule of Law and constitutional order, wise political leaders must be aware that those millions of People who value their Liberty and their Republic will be pushed only so far, beyond which all manner of God-given and Founder-sanctioned rights to resist remain constitutional options.
(See OPINERLOG blog post "Obama: Is Impeachment a Viable Option, dtd 8/1/11)
"Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Lord Acton
"Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience." John Locke (1690)
