Impeach Bush, Cheney; that will Elect Giuliani President

Is it possible that Bush and Rove are intentionally committing "High crimes and Misdemeanors" in order to bait the Democrats into impeaching Bush and Cheney? Here's why the Bush people would do that.

Not only is the Bush Presidency the Presidency of a criminal organization, it consists of failed criminals. When Bush leaves office in January 2009 he will leave behind an eight year Presidency that lacks any single significant success at all. Bush's signature action is not going to be his effort to track down the terrorists who attacked America on 9/11. It is going to be his too-smart-by-half misdirection in which he tried to overreach and totally reform the Middle East into his vision (and that of the free market oil-besotted Republicans) by attacking Iraq, the weakest Middle Eastern country he could attack. Iraq was the one major oil supplying Middle Eastern country Bush's father had already proven the American military could easily defeat. The result, through what Rumsfeld called "Shock and Awe," was suppose to be a new Middle East consisting of a set of peaceful modernized market-based Middle Eastern states ready to sell oil to the U.S. and recycle the resulting petrodollars by buying American consumer goods and services, all while leaving Israel alone.

Bush's God-given genius was going to create a miracle in the Middle East, and no one else had even thought to try it. The September 11 attacks opened the opportunity.

The many levels of stupidity built into the preemptive attack on Iraq will be studied for decades. Now sometimes even a stupid move can be carried out so that the end results look at least acceptable. Because of Bush's complete lack of any semblance of leadership skills and his inability to select and use competent subordinates that has not been a possible outcome of the abysmally stupid invasion and botched occupation of Iraq.

The American public is sick of Iraq, and Bush refuses to face reality and get us out of there. In so doing, he is destroying the Republican Party as a national party for at least a generation. (The really good part is that Bush has discredited the conservative movement so badly that it can only be replaced. It will never recover.)

Is there anything that could possibly reverse the unparalleled disaster that the Bush administration has perpetuated on America and on the Republican Party? Something that could be done now so that the Republicans could - somehow - retain at least the White House in 2008? Yes, there is, but it is nothing the Republicans can do themselves. They have to get the Democrats to do it for them.

To win or, more realistically, even limit the severity of the Republican losses in the 2008 elections the Republicans have to force the Democrats to impeach Bush.

God only knows that America has never had a President who deserved impeachment more. Even the two other Republican Presidents who well deserved impeachment (Andrew Johnson and Richard Nixon) did not deserve impeachment as much as Bush does. Justice demands, even screams, that Bush and Cheney must be removed in disgrace immediately. Justice literally screams for impeachment!

But look at the argument Michael Tomasky of the Washington Post made yesterday regarding the political effects of impeaching Bush and Cheney.

Impeachment is not merely a bad idea, but the single worst course of action that Democrats could possibly undertake -- the only thing they could do that might, in one stroke, convert Bush from the figure of contempt and mockery he is now into one of vague sympathy. Just as bad, it's the one move that would definitively alienate nonideological voters and, therefore, harm the Democrats' otherwise excellent chances for winning congressional seats and the White House in 2008. And that's just what impeachment would do to the Democrats. Even worse is what it would do to liberalism and to the country.

You don't have to be as expert a nose counter as Lyndon B. Johnson to know that impeachment wouldn't succeed. You'd have to get both Bush and Cheney to make any difference, which makes it a heavier lift. Even if the articles of impeachment somehow got through the House -- a stretch, because 61 Democrats represent nominally "red" districts and thus may feel compelled to vote nay -- conviction would require 67 votes in the Senate. That means at least 18 Republicans would have to vote to remove a Republican president and vice president. (I'm assuming that Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, an independent, would vote no.) Of course, new bombshells could change all that. But for now, impeachment advocates are urging Democrats to start a fight they'd lose.

[Snip]

Republicans would be far more adept at turning a failed impeachment effort to their advantage in 2008 than the Democrats were in 2000. Back then, Al Gore, his handlers and Democrats in general sought to run from Clinton and push the conversation back to that bland terrain to which defensive Democrats always scamper: "the issues." Republicans, who aren't usually defensive and don't generally scamper, would make impeachment the issue, and by Election Day 2008, the GOP would have millions of Americans believing that -- get this -- the really merciless partisans of the Bush era were the Democrats.

One of the Democrats' strongest arguments for 2008, regardless of their nominee, will be that it's time for the country to set aside rampant partisanship and ideologically driven government. Impeachment would take away that argument.
[Highlighting mine - Editor WTF-o]

Let me briefly summarize the clear outcome of any effort to impeach Bush - Cheney.

1. The impeachment effort will fail. Senate conviction is impossible.
2. Any impeachment effort will shut down the Congress for all other actions. The Republicans don't even have to be obstructive to create the "do-nothing Congress" issue.
3. An attempt to impeach Bush Cheney is the only action that could possible make the Republican Party competitive in the 2008 election by shifting the onus of "Partisanship above the countries' business" onto the Democrats - and it would.

Karl Roves signature strategy for winning difficult elections has always been to convert the opponent's strength into a weakness and to convert his candidate's weakness into a strength.

Bush is so far down in the polls that he has no political strengths of any significance, and he has led the entire Republican Party into the same ditch he is in himself. That is the major weakness of both Bush and the republicans generally - only slightly ahead of the abysmal choice of candidates they have attempted to field to run for President, but that is another issue. How might Karl Rove apply his signature election strategy to the rapidly approaching 2008 election?

He might have Bush make a series of very provocative acts which are clearly high crimes and misdemeanors, tied into alleged efforts to fight the GWOT (Global War on Terrorism.) The effort would not be to create an impregnable Unitary Executive Presidency, since a Democratic President and Congress can reverse those actions starting in 18 months. The intent would be to bait the Democratic Party into attempting to impeach Bush and Cheney.

Mix a Democratic effort to impeach Bush and Cheney with the still very powerful and dangerous Republican propaganda machine and Rove would convert Bush's biggest weaknesses into strengths while converting the Democratic strengths going into the election into weaknesses.

Do you think that Bush and Rove would risk destroying America simply to ensure a Republican election victory (or reduce what is shaping up into a party-destroying loss) in 2008?

Sure they would. Wearing pleased smirks on their faces all the way.

Democrats need to resist the bait. Much as I hate deferring gratification, impeachment must remain off the table.