Republican Voters Want To Impeach The President Good Luck With That
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and other Republicans calling for the impeachment of President Barack Obama might want to take a look at the history books and the U.S. Constitution before getting too excited about the idea.
Congress rarely uses its power to impeach, and when it has, impeachment has only infrequently and in the case of a president, never resulted in removal from office. Congress has initiated impeachment proceedings more than 60 times in the history of the United States. Just 19 of those cases have been tried by the Senate, and only eight federal judges have ever been convicted and removed from office.
Although House Speaker John Boehner has maintained he is not interested in pursuing impeachment, a top White House aide said Friday that he expected House Republicans to do just that. And a recent HuffPost/YouGov poll shows that one-third of Americans and two-thirds of Republicans believe Obama should be impeached. These numbers reflect an increasingly popular view in conservative circles, which Palin gave voice to earlier this month when she claimed the recent surge of undocumented immigrants at the border was an example of the presidents rewarding of lawlessness.
So, why do some conservatives appear to think this would be more of a Nixon than a Clinton situation?
Rep. Bob Goodlatte , chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, earlier this month offered perhaps the most sober rebuke to the calls for impeachment.
Why Did Republicans Want To Remove President Johnson From Office
Republicans wanted to remove President Johnson from office sothat he could not oppose the reconstruction plans being proposed bythe Congress.
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House Of Representatives Impeachment Inquiry
On October 8, 1998 the United States House of Representatives voted to authorize a broad impeachment inquiry, thereby initiating the impeachment process. The Republican controlled House of Representatives had decided this with a bipartisan vote of 258176, with 31 Democrats joining Republicans. Since Ken Starr had already completed an extensive investigation, the House Judiciary Committee conducted no investigations of its own into Clintons alleged wrongdoing and held no serious impeachment-related hearings before the 1998 midterm elections. Impeachment was one of the major issues in those elections.
In the , the Democrats picked up five seats in the House, but the Republicans still maintained majority control. The results went against what House SpeakerNewt Gingrich predicted, who, before the election, had been reassured by private polling that Clintons scandal would result in Republican gains of up to thirty House seats. Shortly after the elections, Gingrich, who had been one of the leading advocates for impeachment, announced he would resign from Congress as soon as he was able to find somebody to fill his vacant seat; Gingrich fulfilled this pledge, and officially resigned from Congress on January 3, 1999.
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Why Did The Radical Republicans Want To Impeach Andrew Johnson
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The Radical Republicans in Congress differed with Andrew Johnson about how deeply the federal government would be involved in changing southern governments and southern society after the Civil War during the period called Reconstruction. Johnson, who was from Tennessee, was considered too soft on the former Confederate states. For example,
A Brief History Of Gop Calls For Obama’s Impeachment From Benghazi To Bergdahl
Allen West is hardly alone.
Allen West wants President Obama to be impeached over the Taliban prisoner swap.
In a blog post titled, “The case for impeachment of Barack Hussein Obama,” the Florida Republican and former congressman wrote that exchanging “traitor” Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for five Afghan Taliban members should be an impeachable offense.
After supposedly going AWOL, Bergdahl was captured by the Taliban and held in Afghanistan for five years. The five senior Taliban members who were released had been detained at Guantanamo Bay, and will now spend another year in Qatar.
“Why would the United States acquiesce to the demands of a non-state, nonuniform terrorist organization the Taliban? The Taliban is our enemy and it is not a nation-state with whom we should enter into negotiations,” West wrote on Tuesday. “Ladies and gentlemen, I submit that Barack Hussein Obama’s unilateral negotiations with terrorists and the ensuing release of their key leadership without consult mandated by law with the U.S. Congress represents high crimes and misdemeanors, an impeachable offense.”
Back in 2010, Jonathan Chait predicted that by the end of Obama’s second term, the House of Representatives would vote to impeach him. “Wait, you say. What will they impeach him over?” Chait wrote. “You can always find something. Mini-scandals break out regularly in Washington.”
Here’s a short rundown of other White House scandals that have led Republicans to call for Obama’s impeachment :
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Trump’s Plea Deal Features No Witnesses
So the Senate Republicans basically gave Trump a plea deal. The process to impeach a president is not the same as what a regular citizen would go through in a real trial case, but this was as close to a plea deal as he could get. The Republicans assured him they would call no more witnesses and allow no more documents, and I believe there can only be one explanation.
He has none to exonerate him. An innocent person who had witnesses in the room and on the call would be screaming for those people to testify on his behalf. Instead, he has chosen to have those people refuse to testify and will fight any subpoena that orders them to testify. That is the ultimate sign of guilt.
The Republicans want to call two main people who were not present when this call went down. Hunter Biden and the whistleblower. They also have hinted at Joe Biden as well. The whistleblower was not in the room or on the call. That person repeated what someone had told them about the call.
President Andrew Johnson Was Impeached For Firing A Cabinet Member
In the 1860s, a presidents unilateral firing of a cabinet member could become an automatically impeachable offense, thanks to a law intended to restrict presidential powers. In fact, it was a law that almost got a sitting presidentAndrew Johnsonbooted out of office.
The Tenure of Office Act seemed simpleit prevented the president from firing cabinet appointments that Congress had previously approved. But when President Andrew Johnson defied it, a standoff resulted. As a result of his combative attempt to skirt the law, Johnson was nearly impeached and has gone down in history as one of Americas worst presidents for his defiance.
Before the law was passed, presidents could fire cabinet members at will. But the lawcreated to stop Johnsons attempts to soften Reconstruction for Southern states after the Civil Warwasnt just any Congressional act. It resulted in an increasingly absurd spiral of one-upmanship that culminated in a rare presidential veto, an even rarer congressional override, a sensational impeachment trial that was so well-attended that Congress had to raffle off tickets, and an ongoing conflict over executive power.
A political cartoon showing Vice President Andrew Johnson sitting atop a globe, attempting to stitch together the map of the United States with needle and thread.
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Trumps Former Chief Of Staff Is On Capitol Hill To Meet With The Impeachment Team
From CNNs Kristin Wilson
Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told reporters that the Democrats opening argument was pretty much what I was expecting and that its hard to make a good case when you have an unconstitutional process.
He said hes spoken with former President Trump on a regular basis but had not spoken with him about the opening arguments at the Senate trial.
When asked why he was on Capitol Hill, he said, Im just coming over to meet with the impeachment team and said that he will be with them sporadically over the course of the trial.
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Donald Trump Claims Republicans Never Even Thought Of Impeaching Barack Obama History Tells A Different Story
President Donald Trump claimed that Republicans never even thought of impeaching Barack Obama, despite the record showing that many spoke of doing so over multiple issues.
In an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Trump called on Republicans to get tougher and said that while he thinks Democrats are bad politicians with lousy policies he respects that they stick together. And, Trump said, Democrats are vicious.
Theyre much more vicious. We would never do a thing like this, Trump told Hannity of the current House impeachment inquiry over the Ukraine affair in which the president is accused of soliciting the help of a foreign government in the 2020 election.
couldve impeached Obama for the IRS scandal, they couldve impeached him for the guns or whatever, where guns went all over the place and people got killed with guns, Fast and Furious. They couldve impeached him for many different things. They didnt impeach him. They never even thought of impeaching him.
In fact, Republicans in Congress did raise the impeachment of Obama multiple times.
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How President Obama Will Be Impeached
Writing about Rep. Eric Cantors; stunning primary defeat last week, I warned Democrats that the House majority leaders loss was as much a wake-up call for them as it was for the GOP. Well, now I want to warn them about a very real possibility: President Obama will be impeached if the Democrats lose control of the U.S. Senate.
Yeah, yeah, I read Aaron Blakes astute piece in The Post on the impeachment process. He says probably not to the question of whether the House could impeach Obama. But probably is not definitely. And with the way the impeachment talk has gone, probably not could become absolutely if the Senate flips to the Republicans.
Rep. Lou Barletta became the latest to openly discuss impeaching the president. In response to a question from a radio host on Monday, the two-term congressman who was swept in during the tea party wave of 2010, said, Obama is just absolutely ignoring the Constitution and ignoring the laws and ignoring the checks and balances. Articles of impeachment, he added, probably could pass in the House.
In a later interview, Barletta said one of the reasons he wouldnt vote for impeachment was because a Democrat-controlled Senate would never convict the Democrat president. Blake also mentions this parenthetically in his piece. Others who have talked about impeachment point to this as the reason not to pursue the extraordinary political rebuke.
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Presidents Constitutional Duty To Faithfully Execute The Laws
On December 3, 2013, the House Judiciary committee held a hearing formally titled The Presidents Constitutional Duty to Faithfully Execute the Laws, which some participants and observers viewed as an attempt to begin justifying impeachment proceedings. Asked if the hearing was about impeachment, the committee chairman responded that it was not, adding, I didnt mention impeachment nor did any of the witnesses in response to my questions at the Judiciary Committee hearing. Contrary to his claims however, a witness did mention impeachment rather blatantly. Partisan Georgetown University law professor Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz said, âA check on executive lawlessness is impeachmentâ as he accused Obama of âclaim the right of the king to essentially stand above the law.â
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Andrew Johnsons Impeachment And The Legacy Of The Civil War
He started as a hero and ended as the impersonation of the tyrannical slave power.
On April 15, six weeks after Andrew Johnson was sworn in as vice president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. Had the assassins plot gone as planned, Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, and Secretary of State William Seward would have also been killed. As it turned out, co-conspirator George Atzerodt, who had stalked the vice president, lost his nerve at the last minute.
A few hours after Lincolns death, Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase swore Johnson in as President of the United States. Republicans were relieved that Johnson had not been killed and could provide continuity; they thought that he would be putty in their hands and would follow the dictates of Republican congressional leaders. They were mistaken. And the resulting conflict between president and Congress led to the first presidential impeachment in American history.
In Johnsons mind, the issue of what to do with the defeated Southern states was simple: impose conditions upon their return to full standing, such as the irrevocable abolition of slavery but do not impose black suffrage as a condition of readmission.
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Many Senate Republicans had decided to make it a close vote but not a conviction.
The Backroom Deals That Saved Andrew Johnsons Presidency By A Single Senate Vote
The impeachment trial was almost over, and Sen. James Grimes was tormented with doubt.
The senator from Iowa couldnt stand Andrew Johnson, the belligerent, racist president on trial before the Senate, charged with defying Congress and the law. Johnson was guilty of a great many follies and wickedness, the mustachioed, mutton-chopped Grimes had written in a letter to his wife.
Grimes feared that if the president were acquitted, he would unleash even more revenge against his enemies and stoke racial violence in the South. But the senator, a moderate Republican, also couldnt stand the impeachers, the radicals trying to tear Johnson from the White House in the name of racial equality. He thought theyd gone too far.
So just before closing arguments began in Johnsons trial in April 1868, Grimes sent messages to Johnson through intermediaries, including one of the presidents defense lawyers. If Johnson agreed not to engage in rash acts that might encourage rebels in the South, and if he nominated a secretary of war in whom the country had confidence, Grimes said, it would help him that is, Grimes and other swing-vote senators might vote to acquit Johnson.
So amid the impeachment trials closing arguments, Johnson sent the Senate a nomination: Gen. John Schofield, Grimess suggested candidate, for war secretary. That got the senators buzzing.
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Obamacare Repeal Fails: Three Gop Senators Rebel In 49
WASHINGTON Obamacare stays. For now.
Senate Republicans failed to pass a pared-down Obamacare repeal bill early Friday on a vote of 49-51 that saw three of their own dramatically break ranks.
Three Republican senators John McCain, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski and all Democrats voted against the bill, dealing a stinging defeat to Republicans and President Donald Trump who made repeal of Obamacare a cornerstone their campaigns.
The late-night debate capped the GOPs months-long effort to fulfill a seven-year promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
3 Republicans and 48 Democrats let the American people down. As I said from the beginning, let ObamaCare implode, then deal. Watch!
Donald J. Trump
The Senate has tried to pass multiple versions of repeal: repeal and replace, a straight repeal and Fridays bare-bones repeal, but none garnered the support of 50 Republicans.
An emotional Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said after the 1:40 a.m. vote went down that Republicans remained committed to repealing the Obama-era health law.
Putting The Bidens On Trial
While the Republicans resisted having witnesses called because they said they already had enough evidence, they spent a lot of time presenting evidence against the Bidens. That was a very underhanded move but it worked because it allowed the Republicans to put the Bidens on trial to Trump’s base.
I can understand that there may have been something strange about how Hunter Biden got the position with Burisma and maybe it needs to be investigated, but this was not the place for it. This investigation should have or could have been done by our government. Oh wait, it was investigated by our government while Joe Biden was Vice President.
That’s the whole point about this trial. All Donald Trump had to do was have the government investigate the Bidens, not ask the Ukrainian president or have Rudy Giuliani to do it. Rudy is a private citizen. Maybe he could have assisted the government, maybe not. I don’t know how that works, but he should not have been the person going directly to President Zelensky asking for information on the Bidens.
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Obama Administration Immigration Policy
In June 2012, Senator Jon Kyl mentioned impeachment when discussing the Obama Administration policy on immigration. He said on the Bill Bennettradio show, “if itâs bad enough and if shenanigans involved in it, then of course impeachment is always a possibility. But I donât think at this point anybody is talking about that”.
In August 2013, Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma responded to a questioner in a town hall meeting, who had asserted that Obama was failing to carry out his constitutional responsibilities, by saying that “you have to establish the criteria that would qualify for proceedings against the president… and that’s called impeachment”. Coburn added, “I don’t have the legal background to know if that rises to ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’, but I think you’re getting perilously close”. Coburn did not specify what grounds he felt would support impeachment, but NBC News noted that Coburn “mentioned that he believes Department of Homeland Security officials have told career USCIS employees to ‘ignore’ background checks for immigrants”. Coburn mentioned no evidence that substantiated his belief.
