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Unprepared for Impeachment
Ricochet ^ | July 10, 2014 | Rick Wilson

Posted on 07/12/2014 1:17:32 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet

No matter how many ways I say this, I’m going to get the usual “RINO!” reaction. I’ll give you the caveat as plainly as I can: this is not an article for or against the impeachment of Barack Obama.

Now, no matter how forcefully I say it, there is still a faction on the right who will take my failure to immediately call for Obama’s impeachment as their chance to damn me as a RINO, a traitor, a fifth-columnist, a secret Obama supporter, a squish, and a sellout to the Evil Establishment. So before you lose your grip, reread the first paragraph carefully. This is not an argument for or against the impeachment of Barack Obama.

While one can certainly make the argument Obama has committed impeachable offenses, his political opponents are not capable of pulling off impeachment in the current political climate, even if they want to. It may be right to. You may think that this is the final way to teach this haughty, terrible, lawless President the lesson he sorely deserves, but you’re wrong.

You can’t pull it off. Both the Congressional Republican establishment and the Tea Party caucus lack the skills, discipline, and planning to impeach Barack Obama. It’s not because Boehner and leadership are squishes. It’s not because the Tea Party caucus is too undisciplined to plan a barbecue. The reason is more serious.

No one has a plan. There is no strategy. There’s no roadmap for the months-long process that would become the center of American political life to the exclusion of every other issue. Bluster and self-indulgence isn’t a strategy (“Don’t blink!”), but it does play into some separate venality and political ambition. There’s a ravenous hunger for clicks and donations on email lists [DONATE HERE OR THE REPUBLIC WILL FALL]. There’s a desire my some future Presidential candidates to out hard-ass other Republicans prior to 2016. But is there a plan? Of course not.

Give me your elevator pitch, not for impeachment qua impeachment, but for how the story plays out from the announcement to Obama mounting the steps of Marine One and flashing a Nixonian farewell salute. What’s your Day One communication strategy when we begin impeachment proceedings? What’s the Day Two strategy? What’s the strategy after the first week? Who are the legislative handlers? Who are the key faces for the media? What’s the timetable, the media plan, the surrogate plan…all the boring block-and-tackle stuff? What happens when your rock-solid arguments melt under legal challenges from every quarter?

Did you remember there are other players in this game? Did you forget that the American people are notoriously fickle? Did you forget that the media still yields a mighty power to misrepresent, to distort, and to flat-out lie about what you’re trying to accomplish? What happens when this raises $50 million in online donation for the bad guys? What happens when they start dropping oppo like nukes on every member of the impeachment committee? What happens when Americans who are bored and restless decide you’re not talking about their lives, but just playing inside Washington games? What happens to the message strategy of every GOP House, Senate, and Governor candidate in the country? What happens when this doesn’t turn bring the White House to heel but instead becomes the only rallying cry that could wake Democrats from their post-Obama, post-Obamacare funk? What happens when Harry Reid slits your throat by not allowing the Senate to pass judgment.

This isn’t something you pull out of your back pocket. This has to be planned, war-gamed, and worked through. The DC boys will act with too much caution, and the Tea Party guys will act with none at all. But as with the shutdown, without a plan, it’s got “DISASTER” stamped on it in red letters.

Just as in the travesty in Mississippi, conservatives will wonder why everything they read on Breitbart or World Net Daily or GotNews didn’t magically change everything. They’ll wonder why magical thinking got its ass kicked by a bare-knuckle, operational campaign. They’ll wonder why the other side laughs at their Marquis of Queensbury rules and skates up to and over the edge of the law. They’ll wonder why their lack of discipline and failure to plan left them with nothing. They’ll wonder why the issues they see as so obvious, so compelling, and so damning didn’t translate to ordinary Americans. They’ll wonder how Obama could possibly escape with his popularity higher than when he started.

Just because Noted Political Strategist Sarah Palin says it, it doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. Just because the American Patriot Tea Party Patriotic Front for Tea Party Patriotism’s emails promise we’ll impeach him if you’ll just click the donation button one more time doesn’t mean impeachment is practical or possible. If you proceed with impeachment without a comprehensive, aggressive, well-thought-out communications and political action plan, you will fail.

You will fail to impeach Barack Obama. You will fail to recapture the Senate. You will fail to turn his last two years in office into the living political hell he richly deserves. And when you fail, the Democrats and Barack Obama get to run their plan instead. They will run back into the welcoming and cozy embrace of their media allies. They will justify every new executive excess and overreach by blaming the GOP for impeachment. Obama will ignore and defy Congress like never before.

If it makes you feel even a little better, this is a Presidency that already reeks of failure. It is a Presidency that will go down in history as a rolling disaster led by a charismatic con man so vastly oversold to the public that it defies description. His failures are a shame and a stain on the Democratic Party that will ripple out for decades. He’ll go down as a historical oddity, a sideshow freak with a cult of devotees divorced from reality. He’s politically dead already, but he’s too prideful to lay down and start stinking.

As I said the beginning I’m not making a judgment over whether we should impeach Barack Obama or not. That’s a legal question above my pay grade. But if Republicans and conservatives continue to make this a part of their message without a more complete plan than we’ve shown we’re capable of producing this far, expect the worst. We’ll be wasting bandwidth and political capital talking about a half-assed, hypothetical impeachment plan that will hurt us more than it will hurt him.

A plan beats no plan, every time.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Government; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: alaska; boehner; demagogicparty; establishment; impeachment; memebuilding; obama; palin; partisanmediashill; partisanmediashills; rickoshay; rickwilson; ricochet; rino; sarahpalin; sellout; squish
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Our founding philosophers made a great system of checks and balances. Yes, Obama should be impeached. No, he can’t be.

Our founders didn’t seem to think that eventually a whole party would be complicit in the destruction of what they so thoughtfully designed.


21 posted on 07/12/2014 2:33:15 AM PDT by Usagi_yo
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

I don’t like the article, but I do agree. Obama should be impeached but it won’t be successful and it will detract from the GOP message this election.

The GOP did have a plan and did try and implement it. The plan was to marginalize the Tea Party ... and now they have nothing. They failed at marginalizing the Tea Party mainly because the Tea Party represents our founders thoughts and designs. The Tea Party *IS* the GOP and all those Rino’s are just the conservative wing of the Progressive party.

We will not take the Senate. We can’t. We have too many lose cannons in the party, and yes, we do have wimps in leadership positions.


22 posted on 07/12/2014 2:39:56 AM PDT by Usagi_yo
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To: DB

No it is a constitutional duty politics should play no part. Clinton was impeached because he broke the law violated his oath. It should be the same with 0 if he violated his oath he should be impeached. House must do their duty regardless of the political consequences.


23 posted on 07/12/2014 2:41:32 AM PDT by vicar7 ("Polls are for strippers and cross-country skiers" Sarah Palin)
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To: DB

And yet the public is clamoring for the border to be under control but nothing happens.

We live in a republic. That means this so called august, bicameral body known as Congress has a duty to do what is right and not just because a mob tells them to do it. It is their job to check and balance the executive branch when it gets out of line. The first act in checking an out of balance tyrant is impeachment by the House. That they don’t do this is a testimony to the fact that they are lazy cowards at best and/or may be part and parcel of the very corruption they refuse to indict.

As for me, I will do what is right and put my faith in the Lord.


24 posted on 07/12/2014 2:42:21 AM PDT by Waryone
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
Give me your elevator pitch, not for impeachment qua impeachment, but for how the story plays out from the announcement to Obama mounting the steps of Marine One and flashing a Nixonian farewell salute.

Say what you will, Richard Nixon at least saw what he was doing to the country and resigned for the good of it. The difference between him and Obama is night and day; Obama is intentionally destroying this country, and resignation is the farthest thing from his mind.

25 posted on 07/12/2014 3:04:04 AM PDT by Gaffer
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

The “dilemma” is very simple: Do we get the rat out of the pantry or do we simply let it eat all of the food (freedoms) in the pantry and simply go elsewhere to do more damage?

There is only one good answer.


26 posted on 07/12/2014 3:24:56 AM PDT by DH (Once the tainted finger of government touches anything the rot begins)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

A strong case can be made that B0 has committed impeachable offenses, yet impeachment is something to be avoided and unattainable. Such is the current state of affairs.


27 posted on 07/12/2014 3:37:14 AM PDT by windsorknot
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To: Waryone
1. Do what is right. 2. Put our faith in God and trust in Him.

The best advice!

28 posted on 07/12/2014 3:47:19 AM PDT by McBuff
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To: Dark Knight
The outcome...successful impeachment...President Biden?

and vice president Hillary Clinton.

29 posted on 07/12/2014 4:51:03 AM PDT by VRW Conspirator (Global Warming is caused by illegal immigrants!)
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To: Smokin' Joe
The first enemies of the Republic that need to be neutered are the lapdog media. Never before in American history have so many been lied to so much by so few.

For a long time the media's reaction was to view everything with suspicion. It was considered part of journalism to investigate the veracity of what was being said by both parties.

It seems that since Viet Nam that it has become the job of the media to make the liberal case and advocate for the democrat party.

I can't give you a reason this happened, or how it happened, it just has.

30 posted on 07/12/2014 5:08:48 AM PDT by verga (Conservative, leaning libertarian)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

RINO?

How about miserable, treasonous bastard obstructionist?


31 posted on 07/12/2014 5:28:54 AM PDT by Diogenesis (The EXEMPT US Congress remains COMPLICIT)
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To: LeoWindhorse
"ready for a coup" for Obama, Romania used an example we could follow with Ceaușescu
32 posted on 07/12/2014 5:42:05 AM PDT by bestintxas (Every time a RINO bites the dust a founding father gets his wings)
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To: verga
How? Infiltration. Why? because control of the media gives the opportunity to control public perception of their world, and thus, public thought, even through such base methods as altering what people find to be funny, controlling their news, the level of outrage attached to any given behaviour.

Add in control of schools and you are on the fast-track to control the opinions and even core beliefs of entire populations (with the exception of a few thinkers and renegades).

33 posted on 07/12/2014 5:46:40 AM PDT by Smokin' Joe (How often God must weep at humans' folly. Stand fast. God knows what He is doing.)
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To: DB

add my 2cents to yours;You don’t make an attempt on the King unless you know you will succeed. To fail only further unleashes him to do more things he couldn’t do in the open before


34 posted on 07/12/2014 5:51:05 AM PDT by aumrl (let's keep it real Conservatives)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Right now the GOP, needs to focus on retaining the House and winning back the Senate, hopefully with a super-majority, which will make the question of impeachment much easier to answer and accomplish.

This is mid-July. Midterm elections are in November. As slow as Washington is at getting anything done, that is a very short time to get our act together to accomplish the goals of simply regaining the majority. Leave the talk of impeachment alone until after we gain more power. By then there will be two years left in Obama’s term. Enough time to impeach and convict but still a long shot with the can’t-move-faster-than-a-snail process in Washington.

This impeachment fervor is a near-sighted solution for right now. It’s like planning a divorce before getting married. Don’t get me wrong. Obama needs to be removed from office, if for nothing else, incompetence, not to mention the crimes and misdemeanors he has carried out. But focus on getting back the majority first and then re-think whether impeachment is advisable or at all possible with just two years left of Obama’s rein of terror on the America. If impeachment were to be achieved, all we would get would be that stumble-bumble, Joe Biden. Better than Obama in my book, but still no prize as a replacement.

It may be best to just throttle him for those last two years by withholding funding, holding more hearings and attempting to get to the bottom of some his odorous messes. It’s been my experience after 67 years of fighting the many battles in life, that it isn’t always the wise course to go for the jugular because you feel like doing it. Sometimes tempered action is the better course.


35 posted on 07/12/2014 5:52:58 AM PDT by HotHunt
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To: McBuff

Hey 28; Did Christ jump from the top of the temple?


36 posted on 07/12/2014 5:53:02 AM PDT by aumrl (let's keep it real Conservatives)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

You can’t just take out 0, biden is even worse as he is a stupid jackass. You have to get both of them, then who do you get RINO CRY BABY.

Part of the reason the Senate did not impeach slick willie was they knew the kook prince Albert was, and chose the lesser of 2 evils.

This gives you the succession order.
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0101032.html


37 posted on 07/12/2014 5:58:40 AM PDT by GailA (IF you fail to keep your promises to the Military, you won't keep them to Citizens!)
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To: Smokin' Joe
How? Infiltration. Why? because control of the media gives the opportunity to control public perception of their world, and thus, public thought, even through such base methods as altering what people find to be funny, controlling their news, the level of outrage attached to any given behaviour.

Makes sense the first act of every tyrant/ despot was to take over the media to control the message.

38 posted on 07/12/2014 6:21:30 AM PDT by verga (Conservative, leaning libertarian)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

This writer has a good point and makes sense. Even if the dems loose the Senate, getting a conviction AND removal are a very long shot, that as the writer says could endear the indies and slightly liberals out of sympathy.

Look at klintoon, did impeachment hurt the jerk? None that I ever saw and may even made him a bigger public figure than before.

If there isn’t a real good chance of stripping nobama back to common dope smoking street hustler, we’ll be better off with him creating and suffering his own powerless failure status for 2 more years. Now that we are beginning to see the dems and (remarkably the MSM quitting to bow at the ankles, he will begin to lash out at them with more venom than we have gotten.


39 posted on 07/12/2014 6:26:27 AM PDT by X-spurt (CRUZ missile - armed and ready.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

The house can impeach the president. However, the senate will try him and to convict him two thirds of the senate must vote to remove him from office. With or without a plan, how can we get two thirds of the senate to vote Obama out of office? Most of the Democrat senators are lost in the liberal bubble. They are beyond reason. As was mentioned in an earlier post, we need to work to retain the house and get the senate. Then we need to find a viable candidate for 2016. Sadly, too many people are already pushing “moderate” republicans which means another loss.


40 posted on 07/12/2014 6:36:52 AM PDT by Essie
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