God save us from the purists.
Like it or no, if you want Bush and Cheney out, then Nancy Pelosi is your presidential candidate and you had best learn to support her, even if you must do so through gritted teeth. If you can't stand her, then you must want Bush and Cheney to keep their gigs. You have no third choice.
Stop whining and start winning.
Pelosi's political instincts tell her that the best way to do impeachment is for her not to say impeachment, at least not until events force her to utter the I-word. Such a triggering event might come in the form of a startling revelation divulged during one of the upcoming congressional hearings. You can bet on revelations aplenty. Of course, after six years of neocon atrocities, one wonders whether anything can still startle the citizenry.
Another trigger might be a groundswell of public opinion. Impeachment from below, as it were.
That's where we come in. It's not enough for us to cite online polls indicating that the American people favor impeachment if, if, if. No, we have to do something.
And here's what we're gonna do:
December 10 is Human Rights Day, and this year we're making it Human Rights and Impeachment Day. Slogan: "Putting Impeachment on the Table."You should also visit the Democrats.com Impeachment for Change site. There's a petition to sign. A million signatures will do nicely, thank you very much.
We encourage you to organize a town hall forum or rally on this day for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney.
Do you have some drab telephone poles in your neighborhood which could use a spot of decoration? Try printing out the Ten Reasons the Impeach George Bush and Dick Cheney, which you can find here. Consider printing it out on a neon-colored paper.
AfterDowningStreet and Democrats.com have started a movement. Join it.
You may also want to take a glance at the novel strategy advocated by a group called ImpeachforPeace. In short and in sum, these folks have discovered an oddity in the congressional rules:
Before the House Judiciary Committee can put together the Articles of Impeachment, someone must initiate the impeachment procedure. Most often, this occurs when members of the House pass a resolution. Another method outlined in the manual, however, is for individual citizens to submit a memorial for impeachment.These folks envision a mass mailing on January 15, when the new Congress convenes. A million pieces of mail should have a rock-em sock-em effect.
After learning this information, Minnesotan and Impeach for Peace member (Jodin Morey) found precedent in an 1826 memorial by Luke Edward Lawless which had been successful in initiating the impeachment of Federal Judge James H. Peck. Impeach for Peace then used this as a template for their "Do-It-Yourself Impeachment." Now any citizen can download the DIY Impeachment Memorial and submit it, making it possible for Americans to do what our representatives have been unwilling to do. The idea is for so many people to submit the Memorial that it cannot be ignored.
So those are your big dates: December 10 and January 15. And even then, we will have just begun to do political battle.
Do you want to wallow in cynicism, or do you want to do every damn thing you can to force Congress to solve the problem? Take action. Join the fight. If you do, then when your grandkids ask you "What did you do during the great war for impeachment?" you won't have to tell them: "Well, I was shoveling shit at Nancy Pelosi."
9 comments:
So, in short, you're just the liberal version of Karl Rove? The ends justify the means? This moral bankrupcy in the Democrats is precisely why I voted all Green in the last election.
It's time for REAL change.
Joe, I agree entirely that the purists are throwing a fit for no particular reason. This debate has been playing out endlessly on DU, and I can't really understand the difference in the two sides. The purists seem to be saying impeach now, and the pragmatists are saying let's develop the evidence through investigations in order to launch impeachment. I think the key to the pragmatic view is that impeachment is a quasi-judicial, quasi-political act, and we need to put the evidence out there so that the public, both Democrats and (sane)Republicans demand it.
BTW, there is one mistaken view that has taken hold in the pro impeachment side -- namely that Pelosi somehow becomes president if both Bush and Cheney are impeached. This is extremely unlikely. The order of succession (president, vice, speaker) applies only to near simultaneous death or removal. A more likely outcome is the Nixonian outcome -- namely that the criminal vice president Cheney is impeached and removed (like the common crook Agnew); then the president appoints a new vice president with the consent of Congress (back then, the genial, bipartisan Ford); then the president is removed and the new vice president becomes president. Even if Bush is removed first, and Cheney becomes president briefly, he will appoint a new vice president and then get removed. Only if Congress impeached and removed Bush and Cheney simultaneously would Pelosi become president, and they won't do that for reasons of both politics (ie changing party control of the White House by impeachment) and concerns about an orderly transition.
anon 5:23: Will you please peddle your crap on some OTHER blog? You really don't care how many kids die in Iraq, how much money slips out of our treasury, or how close we come to Apocalypse. All you care about is your fucking purity. Could you possibly be a more OBVIOUS Republican plant?
anon 6:16: As all West Wing fans know, the process of replacing a VP takes a while. That's our play.
Do you guys really believe that a Democratic congress which is already reneging on ethics reform, gives no sign of taking election fraud seriously, can't find decent committee chairpersons for key committees and wouldn't think of proposing national health insurance for fear of angering the financial industry is going to take on impeachment?
The best anyone can hope for is a comparative absence of active Repug perfidy. But if you're looking for salvation, dream on....
Joseph, anon 6:16 here again. I'm not a West Wing viewer, but it seems that in a pinch, where orderly transition is at stake, a new VP can be appointed in a few hours. It just takes a nomination from the president and a vote in Congress. I can't see them not going the Agnew-Nixon-Ford route.
Because of this, while I'm in favor of impeachment, what worries me is that Impeachment = President McCain or President Powell, not President Pelosi, just in time for a clean incumbent Republican to run in 2008.
I think rolling us back from fascism is of the greatest importance. But I also favor impeachment.
You are right; we may not got conviction. On the othr hand, we just may. There is a faction of the Republican power structure that has washed its hands of W. Maybe they want the cancer removed as soon as possible.
WHether conviction and removal occurs or no, I think impeachment is important. Not last, because I do not think the nation will rally to Bush, the way it rallied to Clinton in the middle of the impeachment proceedings.
I think that it is more important to discredit Bushism than to remove Bush. Impeachment may not remove, but it will discredit.
Joseph - FYI - I posted much of your post, and RawStory has linked to me instead of you. Apologies for that - but at least people are reading it.
You deserve the traffic, lukery. Thanks!
>>These purists remain furious because Pelosi did not sacrifice Congress.
I’ll take the purist side here seeing as how so far no one else seems to be. I am not mad that Pelosi didn’t get up there and say it, I’m mad that, as far as I know, no one did.
You say that Pelosi made the right move. I agree that for her, it was the right move, but for all of us purists, our move was also correct. We have to keep throwing it in their face until they can’t ignore it. I think your post shows that you would agree with this statement but you don’t give any of us purists credit for possibly understanding that.
I would think that some Dem that was in a lost cause election or in a district that favored impeachment would have gotten up and said it. I don’t care. Go ahead and attribute it to us purist nuts or to fanciful wishes but get it out there in a way people can get behind. Maybe this would also be the wrong tactical move as well but this is a least a more accurate statement of why the purist are mad.
Many of us are pragmatic as well. This is too big a deal to insist that we must get a Clintonian like fairytale impeachment. I’ll take it any way I can get it. While I would love to get the whole nine, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et all,(and hell while I’m dreaming, lets toss them all to the Hague when we’re done with them) even a failed impeachment would serve some of the purpose that the process was intended for, a check on executive power.
Alas, all of this is most likely academic. The Dems will not risk their new found power on impeachment no matter how many or how loud we yell.
I know you hate me peddling my third party crap on your blog but this would be a really great time to have a real third party that had some voice in Congress to say what the Dems will not.
BTW, thanx for posting a road map of links to get people involved.
Post a Comment