Letting the repugs lead the ouster effort of Cheney and/or Bush is going to

[Ghost in the Machine]

be DISASTROUS for the Democratic Party. The Dems are more worried right now about how they are going to look in '08 if they ty to impeach or remove either one of these criminals from office.

I'm telling you all right now, letting the repugs start the process will backfire on the Dems. They are already seen as being weak, even among Party loyalists. By not acting, they will seal their fate and hand the '08 elections to the pubbies.

People want to compare the failed impeachment of Clinton and how the repugs lost in the House and Senate afterwards to what will happen now. This isn't going to happen. 90% of America knew that the repug impeachment proceedings were a partisan witch hunt. They knew Clinton was being persecuted for PERSONAL reasons. This isn't the case with Bush/Cheney. They are proven criminals, and a danger to our way of life and our Constitution. Americans will get behind impeachment if it is put on the table and all of their crimes exposed.

Look, I would rather cut my hand off than to pick up a pencil or push a button to vote for a repug.. BUT... come Nov '08, WHOEVER has lead the charge to get rid of these criminals has my vote, and I'm a yellow dawg democrat. Never in my life have I voted for a repug for ANYTHING. NEVER. We'll see what happens in '08.

Ghost

[acmavm]

1. You're so right. I wish someone could explain to me what the hell is going

on with the losers we sent to Washington.

Maybe they're TRYING to make sure that we keep on heading down the road to ruin.

[Phredicles]

3. I am convinced a lot of them like the status quo much better than they let on.

[Ghost in the Machine]

16. If Pelosi has taken impeachment off the table BEFORE she took office

she would have never taken office. She knew this too, which makes me feel that she is just as underhanded and secretive as the repugs that she is enabling.

[Phredicles]

2. If it falls to the Thugs to unseat either of the Gangstas-in-chief the

Democrats' reputation as weaker than weak will be etched in stone forever.

[Ghost in the Machine]

19. That's the whole point I was trying to make...

thank you for getting it. They think they're increasing their chances by not taking any risks or bold initiatives, but they are just painting themselves into a corner.

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. I agree wiht you

the Dems are about to surrender power, period

[whistle]

5. The democratic party like the republican party is all about big money and

...protecting its corporate funding sources. The country is finished for 85% of the people who live here.

[onenote]

6. you got a link for that claim about 90 percent considering the clinton impeachment partisan?

It clearly was partisan, but you're just pulling a number out of thin air. The polls from around that time show a much more confused, conflicted, and divided citizenry:

http://www.pollingreport.com/scandal2.htm#ABC%20News

[Joe Chi Minh]

8. Do you need one? How dumb do you think your compatriots are?

[Ghost in the Machine]

9. Yeah, I could have been wrong about the number... but this isn't

about links. This is about common sense and the direction of the Party. Do you or don't you agree with my assessment? I'm speaking about the future of the Party, not about who did or didn't support Clinton and by what percentage.

On edit: removed smartass link reply

[onenote]

11. I disagree with it in a couple of respects

First -- At this point I don't see any repubs "leading the ouster effort" nor do I see a lot of indication that they're about to.

Second, if a few repubs jump ship on chimpy and/or cheney, at which point the process may actually get started, it will not be "led" by a repub any more than the Nixon impeachment was led by Howard Baker.

The Nixon impeachment is a good model..it took a bi-partisan effort to get it started and it was because of pressure from repubs that Nixon resigned...yet the Democrats did not suffer in the next election ...anything but. They wiped the floor with the repubs.

[Ghost in the Machine]

12. Did you miss this? A GOP Plan To Oust Cheney

A GOP Plan To Oust Cheney
By Sally Quinn
Tuesday, June 26, 2007; 12:00 AM
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/25/AR2007062501038.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

The big question right now among Republicans is how to remove Vice President Cheney from office. Even before this week's blockbuster series in The Post, discontent in Republican ranks was rising.

As the reputed architect of the war in Iraq, Cheney is viewed as toxic, and as the administration's leading proponent of an attack on Iran, he is seen as dangerous. As long as he remains vice president, according to this thinking, he has the potential to drag down every member of the party -- including the presidential nominee -- in next year's elections.

On edit: I removed the little smartass link on my previous reply. Sorry, but I get agitated sometime about that. It's just that sometimes it doesn't matter what someone posts, someone, somewhere has to ask for a link. I could post : "So, I'm sitting here scratching my ass and think I got something under my fingernail".. and someone would ask for a link. No, I don't have a link, I'm just speaking from the heart... but I understand your desire for accuracy. Sorry

[onenote]

15. Didn't miss it. Didn't much buy into it either.

Sally Quinn's story fits well with the Post's series on Cheney and helps hype it, but she offers nothing but speculation for her hypothesis.

And under her own theory, Cheney isn't publicly pushed out by the repubs, he leaves because of "health reasons". Well, think about that for a minute. Either he leaves voluntarily or he doesn't leave. If he doesn't want to go, and called the repubs bluff, I have no reason to think at this point that any repub, John Warner included, is going to suddenly become an impeachment advocate. To do so would be to admit that they were wrong about the guy and about chimpy or, even worse, complicit in the same things that they are driving him from office for.

So either cheney decides to take a hike on his own because of some plot to get Fred Thompson the presidency, an idea that Sally, who seems to have a crush on Fred, believes but that no one in DC thinks is feasible since it involves running over Mitt, Rudy, McCain, Brownback etc etc.

Basically, I think Sally needed to write something so she wrote something. But I don't view it as anything more than a daydream.

[Ghost in the Machine]

20. You side stepped the overall issue again. The context of my OP is that

Letting the repugs be the ones to initiate any kind of impeachment charge or be the ones to start putting pressure on Cheney or Bush to resign is going to be disastrous to the Dems.

First you dance around it by nit-picking a number (which is a valid complaint, and I admitted that I just pulled that number out of my ass), then you dance around it again by giving a nice summary and your opinion of what someone else wrote and why she wrote it.

Now let's just get to the meat of the subject....

Will it or won't it be disastrous for the Dems to let the repugs take any kind of lead to ouster these criminals camped out in our White House and Government?

The Dems don't want to rock the boat or seem like they are on a vendetta against the pugs so that they "look good" for Election '08, but they are in effect making themselves look weak, spineless and unable to get the job done that they were elected to do and it's going to backfire on them. True or False ??

:hi:

[onenote]

21. The answer, imo, is no, it won't be disastrous

Well, maybe it would be if you surmise a hypothetical, completely unrealistic imo, that there is a well-publicized and acknowledged effort by repubs to drive Cheney from office coincident with efforts by Democrats to frustrate that effort. Okay, if that happens, its a disaster for Democrats.

But under any realistic scenario, its not. Assuming that there is a realistic scenario that involves repubs pushing Cheney out (and again, at this point, there is nothing to back up Quinn's speculation about a repub effort against cheney). One scenario is that key repubs publicly signal that they want cheney impeached -- how would they do this in a way that wouldn't be a bluff? Well, they'd pretty much have to sign on to the impeachment resolution that already was introduced and co-sponsored by eight democrats. At that point, there is no reason to think that, with key repubs having jumped on, that Conyers doesn't start hearings and away we go. With Conyers in the lead and far more Democrats supporting the effort than repubs (and some leading repubs, dead-enders, fighting it hard), the result, in the end, will be like that following the Nixon impeachment effort -- repubs jump ship, but repubs take it in the chops the following november.

Or the repubs more unanimously amongst themselves come to the conclusion that cheney has to go. Of course, they don't want all the dirty laundry, which will splatter all over chimpy and themselves, publicly aired in an impeachment process, so they go to Cheney privately and beg him to step down. As I pointed out, cheney's most likely response to this request, is to tell them to fuck themselves. Or he has a change of heart (irony intended) and announces for health reasons he's going to step down. Now some deal already has to have been worked out as to a replacement and that's going to be damn near impossible for the repubs to do. But assuming that they overcome that issue, the deal almost certainly will have to be accompanied by great demonstrations of repub public support for and defense of cheney for his great and wonderful service to American and attacks on the bad, unpatriotic, vindictive Democrats who went after this ailing patriot. Cheney is not leaving voluntarily without such a deal (and, again, the repubs who have defended him or remained silent over the years have to praise him as a self-protective measure or admit that they were complicit).

Or, and I think this is unlikely, after cheney balks at a private appeal for him to step down, a group of powerful leading repubs goes public with a demand that Cheney leave office "for the good of the country", maybe admitting he's abused power or more likely blaming the Democrats for a witch-hunt that has made it impossible for Cheney to effectively serve. The former approach will be viewed by the public as a vindication for what the Democrats have been saying -- Cheney's a bad guy and the repubs finally are admitting it. But since the repubs won't have pushed for impeachment, there will be no backlash against the Democrats for not moving forward with that process. All anyone will care about is the result. Under the "blame the Democrats for tarnishing this good man" approach, the repub base will be pleased and will rally, but the rest of the country won't buy it.

In short, I don't see any realistic scenario where the Democrats are hurt if repubs turn on cheney. The only way that could happen is if the Democrats actually fought to keep cheney against repub efforts to oust him, and that is simply unrealistic to believe will happen.

[Joe Chi Minh]

7. "WHOEVER has lead the charge to get rid of these criminals has my vote,"

That's one of the dumbest things I've read on here. Ever. That's as dumb as a trooper who survived the Charge of the Light Brigade saying, "OK, so Lord Cardigan's not the smartest general, but I'd follow him anywhere. I feel I could drink a beer or three with him, you know."

They're only the tip of a poisonous dagger. Others like it could soon be fashioned, if the rest of the American people were foolish enough to be restricted by such a narrow perspective.

[Ghost in the Machine]

10. So are you saying you would still vote for someone who was complicit

or otherwise indifferent to the theft of our Democracy? You'd vote for a Dem that sat on their hands and whined about "not having the votes to impeach" before you would vote for WHOEVER had the courage to stand up and help topple this misadministration?

I don't get where you're coming from..

[Joe Chi Minh]

22. I was under the impression that you were advocating voting for those Republicans,

if they lead a movement to get impeach Bush, Cheney, etc. And I am saying that that is stupidest thing ever for a Democrat to say; for any thinking person to say.

The remaining putative Republicans are not 'bona fide' Republicans. They left the party long ago. Your Republican friends would simply be acting from self-interest. The penny's dropped and they realize the boom is going to be lowered on themselves. It would be a last attempt to salvage some merit in the eyes of the public, but surely you realize, even if there were enough of them to form a party, they'd still be neocons, ready to break out.

[in_cog_ni_to]

13. The same goes for Lugar's 'change of direction in Iraq' speech. Let the repukes lead the

charge out of Iraq, the Dems lose BIG TIME! That's why they are now in power. THE PEOPLE wantOUT of Iraq...yesterday. Now the repukes will take the war issue AND the impeachment issue away from the spineless Dems and then we are screwed. Why can't the dumb ass Dems see that?

HOWEVER, I would rather eat my left leg than vote for a repuke. I would NEVER, EVER, EVER vote for a repuke.

[Ghost in the Machine]

14. I feel the same way you do about voting, honestly. I just don't know

if I could "hold my nose and vote" for a Pro War Dem or one that sat and did nothing, while they let the repukes take charge of trying to save our Country. That's what it all boils down to for me right now. I'm more passionate about preserving our Country and our Constitution than I am about Party loyalty at this moment in my life. I want my kids to grow up in the same country, with the same liberties and freedoms that I had. Whoever helps with that effort is where I go. Period.

[onenote]

17. Disagree with this too.

Democrats, virtually unanimously, supported setting a timetable to get the troops out but were blocked by a repub veto and repub votes to sustain that veto. Now, in an effort to save their asses, a few repubs are beginning to gingerly shift their position to support that very concept while somehow trying not to admit that they got it wrong when they opposed it and labelled it "surreneder". They are the one's that are playing catch up.

The repubs only "lead" the way out by admitting that they and chimpy got it wrong. I can live with that.

[bigtree]

23. why would you say they are leading?

Our party is united against the occupation and ready (again) to vote for an exit date. If republicans come to that position they're coming late, after letting the soldiers hang out there on the limb for months since they refused to allow timetables to advance.

[dysfunctional press]

18. face it- they ARE weak, spineless,ineffective, and pretty much totally worthless.

ain't centrism wonderful...?

[Chemical Bill]

24. I still won't vote for repukes. n/t