The Investor’s Business Daily:
Liberals claiming Republicans want to impeach Obama should first explain why Republicans would want to. Obama is Republicans’ greatest political asset and Democrats’ greatest political liability. And for Republicans, he promises to be an asset that continues to pay dividends.
I’ll be honest: if the Democrats had elected anybody like a credible replacement Vice President and if I thought that the GOP was prepared to impeach (we are not*) I’d be a lot less hostile to the idea. But they did not, and we are not, and (as the Klingons say) I will not fight in a burning building. And – hold on, let me put on my Partisan Republican Hack hat – the long-term damage that Obama is doing to his own party has to be seen to be believed. Particularly on the state level: we’re gearing up for another lopsided victory in the state legislatures this year, and a draw in the governorships**.
Yes, the President is bad at his job. Possibly the worst we’ve had since James Buchanan. But we’ve survived worse.
Via Instapundit.
Moe Lane
*Make no mistake: we are not. That ‘we’ includes the people who want impeachment. Read Rick’s post again.
**Which, given that we’re ahead in those anyway, scores as a win for us. I like fighting on the other guy’s turf. It gives us flexibility.
“Possibly the worst we’ve had since James Buchanan.” I just want to point out, Moe, that Buchanan bequeathed us the Civil War which required one of the two greatest men in American history for this country to survive. Forgive me if I don’t find much comfort in having *that* as my floor.
As long as you aren’t calling Lincoln “great” …
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You can make the case that, had Lincoln lived, the reconstruction may have been better handled, maybe, but .. I struggle to reconcile “great” with “Plundered the proper role of the States for the Fed”.
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Mew
I think “Plundered the proper role of the States for the Fed” was an unintentional consequence that Lincoln certainly didn’t want to see happen, and may not have happened if he had lived to better manage the Reconstruction.
That being said Lincoln gets to be called Great because he faced the greatest Crisis this nation has ever seen and managed through great Adversity to Preserve said Nation.
Keep in mind that the Federal Government expanded in influence in power under every noteworthy President, from Washington and Jefferson, to George Bush.
Even guys like Reagan and Eisenhower expanded Federal Power despite campaigning somewhat ( in the case of Eisenhower, full throated in the case of Reagan) against such an expansion.
Coolidge is the only noteworthy ( as opposed to the one term bums between Lincoln and Cleveland and Jackson and Lincoln)
President in which the Federal Government did not expand in power, and it still held more power over the states then it did immediately after Lincoln.
Buchanan didn’t possess near the powers of the modern Presidency or command a bureaucracy that penetrates down to the local level with a level of control that would stagger a 19th century political wonk. Buchanan’s inaction made the Civil War bloodier (he did not give up Fort Sumter but he allowed the South to organize before Lincoln took office), but he was in a long line of Presidents who sought to delay the slavery issue (and hope it would eventually go away) rather than looking for a way to end it peacefully in any sort of timeframe. The Republicans\abolitionist movement were not going to be contained on the issue for much longer, the Democratic party split into North\South factions, and there were elements in the South pushing for secession well before 1860.
Limited federal power might have saved us from the Obama admin’s inexperience, incompetence, and alleged malfeasance (yeah being generous here). We’re still too close to gauge the historical consequences of Obama but I’m reasonably sure any positive ones would be by result of his negative example and at present he beats out Harding, Carter, and Buchanan for the title.
Buchanan wasn’t a moderate who was overtaken by events; he was a partisan for the South who helped contribute to the division within the country. While President-elect, he convinced fellow Pennsylvanian Justice Grier to get on board with the Southern majority in order to get a broader decision in Dred Scott. He put a southerner in as territorial governor of Kansas, and then when that gentleman resigned in disgust over the shenanigans surrounding the “adoption” of the Southern-favoring Lecompton Constitution, Buchanan continued to push Kansas admission under the Lecompton Constitution, and managed to drag it through the House before getting stopped in the Senate by Stephen Douglas. These and other, lesser such actions managed to split the Democratic Party and got enough Republicans elected in the North that they held a plurality in the House and blocked his agenda for the second half of his term.
BTW, the joke I’ve always heard to justify Buchanan being rated as the worst president in U.S. history: he’s the only president to end his term with fewer states in the Union than when he began.
Except that he’s doing more damage to the country than he is to his political party.
This is the building that’s burning.
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You’re also unfairly maligning Jame Buchanan. He never once abused the power of the Presidency. Which makes him significantly better than most modern Presidents.
I am taking the long view, Luke.
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Yes, Obama is damaging the country .. but much of the damage is to areas that are, to use an analogy, choked with deadwood and tinder because we’ve artificially prevented exactly the kind of forest fire that would clear the deadwood and allow new growth.
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I’m not pleased to have to live through the fire, but I think Junior Cat’s generation will have a better time if we burn it now than if it continues to accumulate.
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Mew
It’s burning. And there’s not a bloody thing we can do about it.
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I’ve done what I could to clear the brush for over a quarter century.
The vast majority of people weren’t interested in listening. And even now, with the conflagration staring us in the face, they still aren’t.
But they’re willing to freak the frack out about peak oil, global warming, and imaginary racism.
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If we could suddenly get most of the population to open their eyes, we could light some backfires and limit the damage. (Impeaching Obama would be a good start.)
But there’s no evidence that this is going to happen.
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As to the next generation benefiting, that all depends on who best takes advantage of the coming chaos, doesn’t it?
For some reason, I think those who rail against private property, thrive on creating dependency, and fetishize revolution are somewhat prepared for the world they’re creating. One thing for certain, they’re not going to stop demagoging. They’ve never let truth interfere with their ideology before. I don’t expect them to stop.
I appear to have a couple winters of brush-clearing on you, Luke, and .. you’re right about how they operate.
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Thing is, it only works as long as they can steal elections and control the narrative .. and they’re losing the ability to do both.
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What will grow after, who can say? It might be worse .. the course of human history argues strongly in that direction, few empires die *well* .. but it might be better *locally*, which is much more concerning to me.
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I do not give a fig for how some idiots in Boston or L.A. choose to live, provided they leave me and mine alone, and I am pretty sure the Millenials are more familiar with this principle, at their various ages, than I was at the same age.
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Mew
They don’t have to steal elections or control the narrative, as long as a clear majority of voters prefer to hear stories of the Big Rock Candy Mountains to actually facing our country’s problems.
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It might be better locally, and I’m doing what I can to see that this happens.
I hope it’s enough.
But I’m bitter that it’s coming to this.
And I know full well that we’ll need the help of those whose willful ignorance helped bring about the sad state affairs to make it happen.
It galls me.
I’ll swallow my bile, plaster a fake smile on my face, and cheerfully try to hold my community together.
But now, in the calm before the storm, I have the liberty to vent a bit.
The damage that was being done to the country was happening before Obama’s election, just not as quickly or as evident to people who normally don’t pay any attention. I’m holding out hope that the Obama admin serves as a sort of inoculation that anyone like Obama should never hold the office… like getting locked in a closet and forced to smoke an entire box of cigars as an object lesson.
My primary forlorn hope is that this starts to swing the pendulum the other way on the centralization issue…more centralized power compounds mistakes and flies in the face of the reality of modern tech driven decentralization. Of course I believe the usual suspects will come forward and call for more centralized powers to deal with the problems they helped create.
On the foreign policy front… ugh… yeah lots of irreparable damage there. With the possible sole exception of Maritime Law there ain’t no such thing as ‘International Law’ without the eventual threat of U.S. hard power. I have no hope that the free-riders will start to help the U.S. taxpayer in footing the bill or even just not to damage global trade further when they start to fill in the vacuum (failing to see that pursuit of narrow self-interest hurts their long term prospects). Lots of people have already died because of Obama’s smart policy, I’m just hoping we can get out of his term with only a few hundred thousand rather than a million+.
Re your last sentence: 2 and a half years to go? A million dead on his account easy, imho. I think we’ll be lucky if it stays in the single digit millions, i.e., we avoid a nuclear world war 3.
I like the idea of impeaching Eric Holder, though. First, it reminds the general public that executive branch officers other than just the President can be impeached; second, if we can’t impeach Eric Holder then there’s no way at all we can impeach Barack Obama.
While I don’t expect Holder to be booted by this Senate, maybe the next one. I think there are atleast a handful of Democrats who want to vote Holder out. And who knows Holder might resign before any impeachment trial were to happen.