Just because they are attempting to sue the president rather than to impeach and convict him, doesn’t make it any less crazy or any more popular.
Starting next week, House Republicans will launch a highly visible—and likely tumultuous—three-week process of bringing to the floor legislation to authorize their promised lawsuit against President Obama over his use of executive actions.
“In theory, you could report out a resolution tomorrow and vote on it,” said a House GOP aide on Tuesday. “But that is not the approach [the leaders] want to take.”
Rather, the aim is to display—if not actually engage in—a more deliberative process, even if amid controversy. This drawn-out script builds toward a potentially dramatic floor vote held just days, or even hours, before the House adjourns on July 31 for its August-long summer break.
It will all start playing out when a panel of experts is called to testify next week on issues surrounding such litigation and to answer members’ questions during a hearing of the House Rules Committee.
The resolution to authorize the legal action will then be formally written, or marked up, by the committee during a hearing the following week. The floor vote on the legislation will follow the week after that, in the days before the break.
So, 2014 is basically a replay of 1998, except there is no stained black blue dress. It appears that six years is the limit Republicans can take of a Democratic president. After that, their lies circle back around and eat their brains.
Boehner should give Gingrich a call and ask him how it all worked out for him in the end.
It’s all so depressing that I can hardly bear to read the news, and never mind watching any of it.
Not me. I’m just munching my popcorn. Eventually we’ll look back on these times and laugh. For now, we watch in amazement.
” … it is a tale.
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
So basically, I don’t care. Wake me when it’s over.
I think Boehner is doing this to appease the Republican crazies in the House who want to impeach President Obama. Boehner knows impeachment would destroy him and what is left of the Republican party. These ridiculous antics may help the Democrats this November, because most people wil not find this Groundhog Day movie very humorous.
I so hope you’re right. At any rate I’m gonna remember the GroundhogDay replay anytime the subject of suing/impeaching/comes up.
Oh no, Br’er Speaker! Please don’t launch a lawsuit against the first black prezdint mere weeks before the midterms!
I made the ’98 comparison this morning myself.
Remember the following about ’98:
The GOP candidate in one race has already been smoked out (Iowa). It will be interesting to see if the GOP is smoked out in other races on impeachment. I don’t think Dems are going to wait to attack this time.
shows how much I cared.
I thought the 1998 gang was criminally insane at the time. Compared with today’s GOP caucus, the ’98 crowd looks like the orators of ancient Athens.
So, Orange Julius is going to run for President in 2028?
That was my thought. On balance, if Orange Julius asks Newt how it worked out, it’ll sound tempting. Write a couple of books, collect tons of wingnut welfare from the corporate lobbyists whose water he’s been carrying for years, play lots of golf, and be rehabilitated as a visionary thinker in another 14 years, assuming his liver holds out. What’s not to like? Major bonus: He would never have to take calls from his lunatic caucus members again.
The Teahadist route along the wingnut welfare circuit isn’t anywhere near as generically lucrative as the Plutocratic Bootlicker route. And I don’t think that the moneymen will forgive Boehner if he pulls an erroneous impeachment hearing. After the moneymen shut him out for fucking over the money in that way, the best he can hope for is to be the short list on Hannity appearances and $5,000/speech gigs at Bumfuck University.
Newt Gingrich was able to kinda sorta get away with it because in 1998 even the moneymen weren’t able to predict how much the impeachment debacle would’ve backfired on the GOP, but 16 years later that excuse is not going to fly.
Great writing, but I have to wonder how much the last impeachment circus actually hurt the Repubs…I mean, they held the House until the 2006 elections.
Abject disgust with Repubs doesn’t seem to translate into accountability for the average American voter.
Democrats seem to have bought into the notion that the impeachment of Clinton hurt the GOP. In a long game it didn’t and the short term losses didn’t cost them control of Congress except in the Senate partway through the 2001-2003 term when Jeffords left the GOP.
OTOH, the GOP seems to be overlooking a critical reason why they had more gains than losses. They had Clinton on tape in public and in a deposition lying about a private sexual matter. Thus, GWB could run around with the claim that he would “restore honor and dignity to the WH” and that sells with a slice of the mushy middle of the electorate.
A third term in the WH for either party is a tough sell. Excluding FDR/Truman, it’s only happened three times in over a hundred years: Taft, Hoover, GHWB. None of those three were reelected.
It did? For all the noises that the GOP made about impeachment in 1998, they retained their 55 to 45 majority in the Senate and sacrificed a mere five seats but not the majority in the House in 1998 midterms.
Clinton wasn’t impeached until December 1998 during the lame duck session.
2000 – the GOP did lose five seats in the Senate but retained their House majority. More important, an inarticulate, dumb guy was made competitive with an experienced, smart, and thoughtful guy. The dumb guy could have won outright if his brother had been better at stealing the election in FL.
2002 – GOP controls Congress again. 2004 – large GOP gains.
The 1998 election was considered a disaster for the GOP because the non-presidential party is supposed to gain seats, not lose them. It was the last straw for Gingrich, who resigned as Speaker immediately after the election.
A disaster is when one loses power; not when one fails to make gains based on some historical artifact or a boneheaded promise of election results from the leader. Had it been a disaster, they wouldn’t have proceeded with the impeachment after the 1998 midterms. The GOP House coup against Newt began in the summer of 1997 (before the impeachment issue) and he did have ethical issues.
they thought they were going to going to get to 60 seats in the Senate with a week out.
How big a disaster was ’98 for the Republicans?
It cost Newt his job.
A disaster is when one loses power; not when one fails to make gains based on some historical artifact or a boneheaded promise of election results from the leader.
By that logic, the American military expeditions into Canada wasn’t a disaster, the Finnish-Russian Winter War wasn’t a disaster, the Falkland Islands wasn’t a disaster, Fascist Italy’s invasion of Greece wasn’t a disaster, the Roosevelt Recession and his court-packing scheme wasn’t a disaster…
Should have said, “electoral disaster” — but you knew that didn’t you?
That’s the point, Marie2. The nations still won their wars despite those bungles — except for the Russo-Japanese war, which Russia could’ve won had it gone on longer. But no one but no one characterizes those conflicts as anything but disasters for the belligerents.
Hung up on military conflicts? McDonalds won their McLibel lawsuit but it was still a disaster for them. Movies can recoup their production and advertising budget and still be seen as a disaster by the parent company. If a MLB only barely wins against a ragtag highschool baseball team in an exhibition game, they’re going to get savaged in the press. If you blow an easy midterm and get a C on it despite the rest of your coursework still letting you get an A, that midterm was still a disaster. Etc. etc.
I’m going to need an explanation as to why electoral politics remains an exception when no other field of human conflict works that way.
Just because someone labels something initially a disaster doesn’t make it so.
“Heaven’s Gate’ was a box-office bomb (and only the tenth largest bomb since then), but a disaster because it led to the demise of United Artists as a studio. “The Fall of the Roman Empire” was disastrous for the producer but not a studio. OTOH, “The Lone Ranger” and “John Carter” will likely never recoup their production/marketing costs for Disney but won’t go into the disaster category.
Lone Ranger was a disaster,
Also name one movie that was expected to be a blockbuster but only recouped its production/marketing costs in its initial run that is considered a disaster.
Beyond the pail, way beyond!
Someone once asked John D. Rockefeller how much money is enough. His answer: “A little bit more.”
Aye, and there’s the rub, eh?
Pale
Apparently you are right. I have always believed that “Beyond the PAIL” came from spitting beyond or over the spittoon. However since you called me out on this, I looked it up and my view was wrong. (But I like my version better) BTW thanks for the support you provide my infrequent comments here. ;))!
An interesting interpretation. I thought it was just the spell checker goofing off.
You are very welcome! And keep up the comments.
Looks as if they’ve come up with a way to piss away the summer session without having to do any actual legislating.
Bingo. The GOP House is too cheap to provide bread, but they’re
desperatehappy to put on circuses for their base on the taxpayers’ dime.Dereliction of duty is Job One!
looks like that’s what the plan is
So this will keep them in the news cycle in the slow summer months. Pundits will handwring about whether executive orders and signing statements have been increasingly abused over several administrations, giving the whole thing creedance.
Then the GOP caucus writes by committee a convoluted lawsuit that gets thrown out on the merits before it goes anywhere.
I suppose if they can get it before this SCOTUS it will make some “Narrowly defined” ruling that in Roberts mind edges the separation of powers closer to what the founders intended — except the powers exercised by the SCOTUS.
So this is a karmic bitchslap, either hold the next administration accountable or drown in your hypocrisy & watch the public not turn out for any of your campaigns.
I have no sympathy because the GOP base wants to tarnish the Obama legacy. Biden,Pelosi & Co. just sat there and after every single inexcusable act from the previous whitehouse, we just sat there and said “Iraq was a mistake” And? Everyone just watched how the DNC responded.
No one has time for any political party who doesn’t take action when it is needed.
Man, the democrats are going to get hammered this year.
It will be a patented “conservative” narrow ruling—specifically limited to Dem prezes!
Arguably quite a bit crazier than impeachment, as well as being even more frivolous. At least the Constitution has the high crimes and misdemeanors stuff. Not high torts and non-culpable negligence.
While the lawsuit looks, and is, silly, consider that Boehner has to do something lest he face a coup from the ever-growing lunatic caucus of his own party. That caucus is perfectly capable and more than willing to bring Articles of Impeachment. If that were to happen then Harry Reid would gleefully bring them to a vote in the Senate after extended debate just to prolong the sight of the GOP pieing itself in the face. Criticize Boehner all you want to; he’s at least smart enough to know that an attempt to impeach the president would do more for Dem turnout than a thousand GOTV campaigns.
So Drunken Boner thinks this is Impeachment Lite? Tastes sorta bland, less nauseating?
In the old days when the federal judiciary consisted mostly of, um, judges, and not 50 year old white conservative activists, this shit would’ve been bounced as a political question which was beyond the judiciary’s jurisdiction. Of course, all these prudential doctrines have been thrown out the window by Roberts’ Repubs.
When one considers the level of executive order signing statement shenanigans that Bushco pulled over its 8 year run, one hopes that an “extended debate” on suing Obammy for Tyranny will present multiple targets of obscene hypocrisy for Dems. Who’s Pelosi gonna be selected as the Chief Machine Gunner when Boner’s Boneheads go over the top?
A quick search revealed that Obama’s predecessor in office signed a total of 291 executive orders during his two terms. Obama has signed a total of 182. Although raw numbers wouldn’t be dispositive in a lawsuit they do suggest a certain amount of hypocrisy on the part of Republicans.
If the Democrats ever take the House back, they should impeach Roberts, et al, over the Hobby Lobby decision which violates the first amendment’s guarantee of freedom of religion by forcing Hobby Lobby employee’s to abide by the religious choices of their
the company’sowners.Hi VW–I agree with you, Roberts should be impeached (and removed) for many reasons, including that he brazenly lied to the senate that he had “no agenda”. There is now simply no objective person who could conclude that was true. His activities in the FL recount were also held back and glossed over.
He is quite simply a liar and pathologically biased in favor of large corporations. “That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain”…
Boehner is a grifter and not a true believer.
If this were 1986, I’m sure he’d be relatively sane…for a Republican.
This lawsuit will be thrown out of the lower Federal courts almost instantaneously, since this is 100% a political issue, with Impeachment the clear option.
Because Boehner doesn’t want to Impeach Obama and encourage Democratic voters to come out of the woodwork for a midterm, he’ll just file a lawsuit that has zero chance of doing anything except maybe garnering a judgment by the most corrupt Federal court extant.
I’d much rather the House Impeach Obama. It would make 2014 midterm turnout closer to 2012 numbers than 2010, easily. This advantages Democrats. Period.