Friday, December 08, 2006
Whatcha think, Bill?
I read this, and heard the quote by Arlen Specter on NPR's Justice Talking (he was bitching about signing statements) wherein he mentioned that Conyers was drafting impeachment papers - I've heard the "I-word" a lot more publicly recently, think there's a snowball's chance in hell? Talk to me of political realities, man!
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There's a chance of it, but I wouldn't look for it to happen real fast. It depends largely on how the mood of the public shifts in the near future. If the administration can get their act together enough in the next few months to at least stanch the bleeding, then I doubt that impeachment will happen. If the administration continues to become more and more unpopular over the next few months, it might happen. Part of the problem is that the Democrats don't have the votes to actually impeach on their own, so they would have to engineer a political situation where it would be suicidal for the Republicans to be seen as supporting a continuing Bush presidency. Clearly the Dems would have to come out with some real gangbuster scandals to do that.
Far more likely, and a bit smarter to tell the truth, would be for the Dems to keep the pressure on Bush through investigations and generally keeping his sins in the public eye and put the Republicans over a barrel to get some shit done New Deal style. Barney Franks of MA is talking about a "Great Bargain" with the Dems trading continued and increasing free trade and other business goodies for social benefits like some sort of national health care. There's a good episode of the radio program "Open Source" (aired on Monday or Tuesday IIRC) available as a podcast that covers the subject well. Anyway, I think that leveraging Bush for that sort of deal-making is more likely than impeachment, as much as he deserves it. If he doesn't settle down and tries to keep expanding his powers it still might happen though. Again, the Dems would have to fix it so that the impeachment would both go through AND be totally what the public wants or else there would be pretty bad political blowback next election cycle.
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