It looks like my recent post calling for the impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney is now the mainstream view, and is hardly radioactive as considered by Democratic leaders. An ARG poll asks, “Do you favor or oppose the US House of Representatives beginning impeachment proceedings against President George W. Bush?” 46% of voters answered yes compared to 44% opposing. Independents favored impeachment by a 50% to 30% margin. Unless Democratic leaders are worried about offending die hard Republicans, they have nothing to fear from moving towards impeachment.
The numbers for Dick Cheney are even worse. Voters support impeachment by 50% to 44%. I bet that these margins supporting impeachment would increase for both Bush and Cheney once the evidence against them was laid out.
Democratic leaders have been afraid of impeachment after seeing how it backfired against the Republicans when they impeached Bill Clinton. The difference is that the voters realized that the impeachment of Bill Clinton represented an abuse of power by the Republican Congress, while in this case it is George Bush and Dick Cheney who are guilty of abuses of power. It is time for the Democratic leadership to do what is right, and what was intended by the founding fathers, rather than being scared of the political reaction.
The Democratic Congress cannot accomplish very much with a narrow majority and a hostile President. There are, however, two things they can do–impeach Bush and Cheney and cut off funding for the Iraq War. In these cases, such acts would be both the right actions as well as the politically popular ones. In this case, it is Republicans who block conviction, and not the Democrats who pass articles of impeachment, who will pay a political price.
