by Robert Emmett Murphy, Jr.
Part Two – 2009 and forward – The Rise of the New Age of the Scurrilous.
President Obama was sworn into office in January 2009. Within seven weeks, Right-Wing pundits were already calling for his Impeachment, but it would not be until May 2010 that a Republican Congressperson would start publicly using the word. Representative Joe Sestak (a Democratic) stated that Obama, pre-the-2008 primary, had promised him a White House job if he dropped out of the Pennsylvania Senate primary race against Arlen Specter. On hearing this, Representative Darrell Issa (a Republican) called the offer an “impeachable” offense. Issa was apparently unaware that such deals are commonplace and was in fact how the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution — the one that ended slavery – got passed. As you’ll see in a couple paragraphs, Issa would come to regret that statement.
Within two months, Michelle Bachman jumped on the bandwagon. She was unhappy with the amount of resources Obama was putting into securing the border with Mexico, suggested that Obama’s failure to satisfy her desires might constitute an Impeachable offense. She was speaking hypothetically and didn’t provide a specific charge of criminal misconduct to base that Impeachment on. (By the way, she is currently under criminal investigation herself.)
The floodgates opened after November 2010 and the “Tea Party” revolution. The 
word “Impeachment” started being bandied around Washington with frequency surpassing the word, “Pork,” and perhaps even the word “Entitlement.” Important in this explosion of rhetoric was the December 2010 elevation of Mr. Issa to the Chairperson of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform which has broad powers to investigate the conduct and policies of the President via public hearings. Issa predicted that his investigations would result in $200 billion in savings for U.S. taxpayers by ending Obama’s programs, and he wanted his Committee hold “seven hearings a week, times 40 weeks.”
Issa was an unusual choice to head a Committee whose responsibilities include investigation of corruption and ethics charges. Though he has no criminal convictions on his record, he does have a past indictment for grand theft auto, was accused of stealing at least one other car, was arrested for illegally carrying a concealed weapon, and was twice the suspect in insurance fraud investigations – in one of these cases the evidence included sworn testimony by former business associates that he burned down a building for the insurance money.
This was seven months after he suggested that an Impeachment investigation be opened regarding the Obama offer to Sestak. Now with the power to pursue the charges that he, himself, had made, a suddenly sheepish Issa said he wouldn’t mount a probe into the matter or similar deals made by prior President George Bush Jr.
But this didn’t really represent a reformation of his character. In January 2011, he declared President Obama headed “one of the most corrupt administrations” in American history. Issa was then challenged to detail the alleged criminal behavior, and he found he was unable to do so, and forced to apologize:
“If I had to do it over again I’d have parsed my words a little more carefully…Do I think the president is personally corrupt, no…I should never have implied that, or created that in a quick statement on a radio call-in.”
He also had to apologize to Congressperson Carolyn Maloney for calling her a “paid liar” after she made a factually correct statement about the gender make-up of a panel on contraception that included no women and blocked the testimony of the only female witness.
Issa’s name will come up repeatedly in part three of this series.
The desire to impeach President Obama is clearly an ideological disease, and this was aptly expounded upon by journalist Steve Benen:
“In a question and answer session following a speech he gave at a Montgomery County GOP dinner last night, an audience member asked Cruz, ‘Why don’t we impeach him [Obama]?’
“’It’s a good question,’ Cruz responded, ‘and I’ll tell you the simplest answer: To successfully impeach a president you need the votes in the U.S. Senate.’
“Actually, it’s not a good question, and to successfully impeach a president you need the votes in the U.S. House. But other than that, the right-wing senator clearly knows what he’s talking about.
“National Review posted an audio clip of the Cruz event, and listeners will notice that neither the senator nor his audience actually bothered mentioning a rationale for impeachment; they just seemed to think it was a good idea. Cruz said something about his belief that Obama has acted outside the law, but he offered no details or specifics.”
Or, as Rachael Maddow pointed out, Republicans rarely level specific charges against Obama when the jump to Impeachment, they “just like the way the word sounds.”
Benen’s article referred to Ted Cruz and Blake Farenthold. I already brought up Issa and Bachman. I could add Congresspersons Mark Wayne Mullin, Kerry Bentivolio, Jason Chaffetz, Steve Stockman, Trey Radel, Louie Gohmert, Tim Scott, Steve King, Tom Coburn and James Inhofe, without completely exhausting the list.
With the exception of Nixon (who had the Articles voted on by Judiciary) and Clinton (Impeached by the House), no American President in the last 50 years or more has faced so many suggestions, or straight-out demands, that he be Impeached. Not Reagan, whose criminality was as definitively established as Nixon’s. Not Bush Sr, who was under investigation (and quickly cleared) of treason. Not Bush Jr, for starting a war under false pretenses and creating secret torture camps.
On what grounds?
The National Black Republicans Association (described as “a small, fringe group that tries to make a name for itself every election season by doing things like running ridiculous ads” by journalist Kyle Mantyla) was kind enough to summarize (almost) all the alleged grounds in one document. You see, they actually filed articles of impeachment against Obama.
The National Black Republican Association should be dismissed as part of the tin-foil-hat-brigade, but unfortunately, their filing has received some national attention. Of course that attention came from Fox News, but still, that was a great deal more attention than they deserved. (This link will take you to the Articles in their original form)
In the next installment, I will start deconstructing their charges one-by-one. Yes, as they are the tin-foil-hat-brigade, and I probably shouldn’t have had to bother, but each and everyone of their claims has been championed by one person or another within in the United States Congress.
Call it a road-map of a road-block. It is a detailing of (almost) all the delusions that brought this Country to a screeching halt.
Click here to view Part One of Robert Emmett Murphy, Jr.’s Impeachment series:
The President Cannot Be Impeached without a Crime (Part One)