In an appearance on “The Lars Larson Show” last week, Rep. Michele Bachmann repeated GOP talking points about how President Obama is somehow behind the Republican-led effort to impeach him.
Bachmann told Larson that Obama is trying to “egg” Republicans to impeach him in order to “help his electoral chances in the fall,” and then will go ahead and “take any lawless action that he wants to because he really doesn’t think that the Republicans will impeach him. He figures it’s an open field day and now is the time to get everything he wants with his radical agenda.”
Yes, it is Obama who is behind the calls coming from congressional Republicans to impeach him, it’s not like any Republican members of Congress, such as Michele Bachmann, would ever suggest Republicans do something like that… except for when she suggested last month that the GOP should make the case for impeachment and rally voters behind it. In fact, Bachmann backed calls to impeach Obama as far back as 2011.
What our president has done is commit impeachable offenses. He has committed them in terms of his lawless acts, he has failed to execute the laws. He said that he would not uphold the Defense of Marriage Act, which is a constitutionally passed law, he said he would not uphold that, as did his attorney general Eric Holder. That, as well as the President changing law like Obamacare, he writes with a press conference or with a Tweet or a Facebook or an announcement of one of his underlings, and then orders the executive branch to carry out his words rather than the law. That rises to the level of an impeachable offense.
Legally, do I believe our president has committed impeachable offenses? Yes I do. And I believe that our president is subject to impeachment. However, I agree with Andy McCarthy in that not only is impeachment a legal issue, it is even more so a political issue. The American people have to agree with and be behind and call for the president’s impeachment. Why do I say that? I say that because we the people who are elected in the United States Congress, we are here to be the voice of the people and we need to reflect what it is what the people are telling us.
There is a group of people who see that this president has committed an impeachable offense and are anxious for Congress to do something, but if you look at the overwhelming number of people, they just aren’t there yet and it is up to Congress to make the case and explain to the people why we have to impeach.
