Playing The Impeachment Card

REPUBLICANS learned an important lesson in 1998. Americans don’t want their president impeached. They figure that they voted for the guy. Now let him do his stuff.

Back then the MSM, or plain media as it was then, was delighted to tell the Republicans what Clinton-hating Puritans they were. And so, in accordance with the constitution, two Republicans had to resign to pay for Democrat Bill Clinton’s lie: “I did not have sex with that woman, Ms Lewinsky.”

That was then, this is now. Back then, the sense of annoyance that Republicans felt towards Bill Clinton was considered rather shabby and unattractive by the media. Today the spluttering rage of Democrats over President Bush is shared by the MSM. They hate the guy, just as Al Gore taught them to hate back in November 2000 when he decided to contest the Florida election.

Their boiling hatred is the energy that Senator Russ Feingold wants to exploit in his motion to censure the president. He hopes his motion will energize the left-wing netroots as he cranks up his run for the presidency in 2008. Elect Democrats to Congress, he seems to say, and we will impeach the president.

As The Wall Street Journal writes in an editorial, Feingold is doing us all a favor, and especially Republicans, by pushing his censure motion. He is telling us what a Democratic Congress would want to do if the voters elected one this Fall.

He's doing voters a favor by telling them before November's election just how Democrats intend to treat a wartime President if they take power.
Not only do they want to block his policies, they also plan to rebuke and embarrass him in front of the world and America's enemies.

Even The New York Times can see that there is a problem. Reporter David D. Kirkpatrick notes that the censure talk could work to the Republicans’ advantage. But don’t worry about impeachment:

Few lawmakers in either party think there is much chance of impeachment even if the Democrats do take the House. Carl Forti, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, called the idea "not realistic" but nonetheless useful. "It shows people how extreme the leaders of the Democrat Party actually are," Mr. Forti said.

Nobody here but us chickens, eh?

Back in 1960 Richard Nixon decided not to contest the close election that was probably stolen in the Democratic machine bastions of Illinois (Dick Daley, prop.) and Texas (Lyndon Johnson, prop.). He thought it would be too divisive.

In 2000 Al Gore elected to contest the close election in Florida, and ginned up his supporters up with divisive partisan rhetoric. When his effort was put down by the U.S. Supreme Court he conceded only grudgingly, and his supporters understood that the attacks on the president could continue.

Ever since the Democrats have been paying for his bad faith. Because when you divide America into conservatives and liberals it turns out that that the conservatives win.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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