Rick does not believe in impeachment, for a very practical reason – to wit: there is no plan* – but he does believe in pain, and how the GOP can apply it to the executive branch in 2015 and beyond. Basically, it’s So you like bureaucracy, huh? Here! Have some!
Congress should be devouring the bandwidth of the targeted agencies. Flooding the zone with requests, constant depositions of senior leaders, a constant legal barrage of inquiry for every email, every piece of paper, everything, all the time. Who cares if we use it? Torture them every minute of the day and force them to live in fear of contempt charges. Make their execs lawyer up, and dig dig dig at every inconsistency.
Second, the power of the purse is entirely underutilized, and Congress as a rule has no creativity. Don’t cooperate? Zero out every executive bonus in the agency for a decade. Don’t cooperate? No more conferences, training seminars, trips. Don’t cooperate? No more drivers for senior execs. Don’t cooperate? Every construction project for every building your agency wants is zeroed. Don’t cooperate? We’re relocating 98% of your manpower to Omaha. Don’t cooperate? Zero out the public affairs budget. Don’t cooperate? Every program with ‘green’ ‘affirmative’ ‘equal opportunity’ ‘LGBT’ ‘diversity’ or ‘awareness’ is zeroed out.
Sure, it sounds petty, but the agency people we’re talking about are the most parochial, small-minded bureaucratic weasels, and their perks and powers are all they care about. All it takes is a more bloody-minded approach.
Some people are going to now immediately say that this won’t happen. Which merely means that some people need to re-read this classic of conservative thinking. Particularly the part about how to get what one wants… and how not to get it, too. For my part – and to quote the philosopher – I love this plan and I am excited to be a part of it.
Moe Lane (crosspost)
*No. Really. There is no plan. I’ve apparently had access to the halls of power of the VRWC for precisely ten years now, and I fully agree with Rick that when it comes to a coherent strategy for impeachment there’s no there, there. And there’s not going to be any there, there. And if you’re pinning your hopes on that there magically appearing then you will be disappointed and that’s just the way that it is, sorry.
Oh yes. Ensure they understand the beatings will continue until morale improves.
The flaw in the plan seems to be that it sounds so very similar to the various defunding fights we’ve had in the past and lost.
That, and about three fourths of the GOP in congress actually approve of the increasing reach of government power. When you combine that with a hundred percent of the Democrats, it’s pretty much unstoppable.
I think it is also that many Republicans are afraid of what the mainstream media will say about them.
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We really need more Ted Cruz’s in congress. I think if we can get Harry Reid to lose his majority leader status, we can make some headway on this issue though.
Attempt this and we will quickly discover that life-long bureaucrats play this game better.
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Don’t play their game — change the rules. Send them to prison, and keep doing it until they realize their mistake.
A key flaw in Rick’s idea is the fact that the argument to impeach Obama isn’t about partisan politics. It’s about putting the brakes on an out-of-control executive branch. There is a case to file articles of impeachment, and one shouldn’t care about strategies one can come up with to try to benefit politically…
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Additionally, the Republicans often seem to plan to just roll over and give the Democrats what they want at almost every turn. The establishment seems more interested in fighting Conservatives than standing up to Democrats, and this attitude needs to stop.
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The argument is that if they stand up they will lose, I would counter that if they never bother to put up a fight, they’re going to lose 100% of the time.