I’m used to feeling isolated from the mainstream media and from the Beltway wisdom. At the same time, my track record has been pretty good over the last two years. Whether the subject was Iraq, Israel’s war with Lebanon, or the midterm elections, my predictions have been much more accurate than anything you get from traditional media sources.
But I am not used to being so isolated from the rest of blogosphere. Nonetheless, when it comes to impeachment, I think I am right and I think my predictions will bear out. Back on December 7th I wrote a diary called Chris and Markos: Wrong on Impeachment. On December 9th, I wrote one called Impeach His Ass, You Have No Choice. Both diaries eschewed any political calculations or even any specific charges. I argued that Bush and Cheney must be removed from office because the situation in Iraq is so dire and so dangerous that we can neither entrust them to oversee our policy, nor can we wait two years to get the new leadership required for taking positive steps. Here is how I put it:
[W]e are at the end of the road. We have exhausted all of our options short of impeachment. Jim Baker tried, but he failed. There is nothing left to do but remove him from office.
The Democrats know it, the Republicans know it, and we ought to know it.
A lot of people questioned why I thought ‘the Republicans knew it’. The answer is twofold. First, there is an almost inexorable logic that is and will continue to lead Republicans to the conclusion that they cannot afford two more years of Bush. Bush is isolated on Iraq. The Republicans do not want to follow him. Here’s David Brooks explaining it to Tim Russert on Meet the Press:
MR. BROOKS: If I could say something about internal Republican politics and about this show. I hope Josh Bolten, the White House chief of staff, was watching Gingrich this first half of this show. Gingrich said, “Unless we fundamentally restructure what we’re doing in Iraq, we will not win.” He is not far off from where a lot of Republicans are. Probably where most elite Washington Republicans are.
So what’s going to happen? These Republicans do not want to run in 2008 with Iraq hanging over. They never want to face another election like that. So at some point, six months, eight months, there’s going to be men in gray suits. There’s going to be a delegation going into that White House saying to President Bush, “You are not destroying our party over this.” And Bush will push back. But that’s going to be the, the tension. Talk about world—American support for the war, it’s Republican support in Washington for the war that the president needs to worry about.
If David Brooks is not convincing enough for you, then try out Steve and Cokie Roberts:
In a USA Today poll, three out of four Americans say Iraq is now engaged in a “civil war.” How does the president convince parents in Redding and Presque Isle that it is worth American lives to keep Muslim sects, thousands of miles away, from slaughtering each other? The answer: he can’t.
That’s why Republicans who backed Bush through the elections are now turning against him. Sen. Gordon Smith of Oregon, who faces a tough campaign in 2008, broke ranks with an extraordinary speech: “I, for one, am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way being blown up by the same bombs day after day. That is absurd. It may even be criminal.”
Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska says the president “misunderstood, misread, misplanned and mismanaged our honorable intentions in Iraq with an arrogant self-delusion reminiscent of Vietnam.”
But how can these critics exert any leverage over a president who is not running again and seems detached from reality? The hardliners in his own party – like Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney, who don’t have to stand for office, or send their own children to war – are still telling Bush to ignore the “surrender monkeys,” as one headline put it.
As for the Democrats, they’re in a terrible bind. As the Baker-Hamilton commission demonstrated, the Bush Administration has made such a total mess that there is no such thing as a good option in Iraq. The panel’s two main suggestions – negotiating with Iran and Syria and turning over security to Iraqi forces – have been widely derided as unrealistic, and with good reason. Neither one holds much promise of working. But then, nothing else does, either.That’s why the Democrats are lying low and insisting that “the ball is in the president’s court.” That might not be a courageous position but it’s certainly an understandable one. This is Bush’s War. He broke Iraq and now he owns it, not the Democrats.
The nation is facing an enormous tragedy. The current president can’t or won’t get out of Iraq, but staying means Pflugerville will keep burying its children. Only a new president will be able to stop the dying.
What do I mean by an inexorable logic? Brooks and the Roberts won’t say it explicitly, but their reasoning leads to the conclusion that impeachment is required. Brooks says, “at some point…there’s going to be men in gray suits. There’s going to be a delegation going into that White House saying to President Bush, “You are not destroying our party over this.”” What does that remind you of? Barry Goldwater and Nixon? And what about the Roberts saying, “Only a new president will be able to stop the dying.” What do you think they mean? That we should just keep dying until January 20, 2009? No.
There is a drumbeat of Washington insiders that are saying they have no confidence that Bush and Cheney are going to change course and that, even if they did, they don’t have the credibility to carry off a change.
So, the first reason why I think Republicans know Bush has to go is that the situation demands it and the logic is compelling. The second reason is that it is in their best interests. They have no reason to back this President in a disastrous foreign policy that they do not see as working. They do not want to go into 2008 still defending this President on the war.
The real solution to Iraq starts at home in figuring out a constitutional way to remove Bush and Cheney and replace them with a caretaker government. The rationale and details of the Articles of Impeachment are irrelevant. We need 18 Republican Senators to agree, in principle, to a process that will give us a new administration for the end of 2007 and all of 2008. That administration should agree not to seek re-election. Ideally, it would be made up of a Republican and a Democrat and have cabinet members from both parties. That is what the situation requires.
