The Patriot Post® · Impeach? Or Play the Hand?

“Impeach”, says Webster, is “to discredit a person’s honor,” to “try (a public official) on charges of wrongdoing.”

It has created a firestorm in American history twice, with Andrew Jackson and Bill Clinton, and threatened Richard Nixon. Jackson and Clinton avoided the political guillotine. Nixon retreated.

The word is being heard more frequently in Washington, D.C., Congress, both alternate and mainstream media, and along my sales route through North Georgia among fellow peasants.

According to a CNN/ORC International poll, 33 percent of Americans now say it is time to try again.

The case to impeach Barack Obama is long: Unauthorized bombing of Libya, IRS targeting of political opponents (the mere thought of such an abuse of power by Nixon was enough in ‘74), the cover up of four American deaths in Benghazi, changing laws at a whim without Congressional input (Obamacare, dozens of times), the changing of other laws, including immigration, that has now lead to an invasion of our nation. In the latest scandal, we face not only massive unnecessary spending, but gang bangers, disease, and the threat of more terrorist infiltration.

Even leading liberal Georgetown university law professor Jonathan Turley has admitted “The danger is quite severe. The problem with what the president is doing is that he’s not simply posing a danger to the constitutional system. He’s becoming the very danger the Constitution was designed to avoid…the concentration of power.”

The issue divides conservatives. Sarah Palin says “The many impeachable offenses of Barack Obama can no longer be ignored. If after all this he’s not impeachable, then no one is.”

Good points.

Patrick Buchannan says conservatives already hold a good hand, especially with midterm elections looming: “With the economy shrinking 3 percent in the first quarter, with Obama sinking in public approval, and with the IRS, NSA and VA scandals bubbling, why would Republicans change the subject to impeachment?”

Good points.

Buchannan served under Nixon, who also faced the constitutional crisis of impeachment – but current media members are not out to get President Obama like they were Nixon. Many journalists are now cheerleaders for the left, others blocking the full stories of our national decline. Nor is there, yet, a “smoking gun” that puts Obama firmly in its sights on any of these issues – only self-professed incompetence, at the very least, which the nation is beginning to see. Obama claims ignorance, by only “reading the newspapers.” Many suspect, including myself, President Obama is following the radical leftist Cloward/Piven strategy (Google it) of bringing down the nation to “transform” it into a utopian socialist state; still, the Senate would more than likely not convict at this point. This president has, so far, made Bill Clinton’s “Teflon” moniker look like Velcro.

Also, there is little appetite to impeach America’s first black president and rally Obama’s weakening base – some even theorize the President would welcome the move and play the race card one more time (on a side note, I personally backed Herman Cain last time around).

Perhaps conservatives should play the hand we now unfortunately hold, in no small part due to Republican avoidance and incompetency. I would prefer to see the House up the ante by withholding funding (the power of the purse, its Constitutional right and duty, turned down last fall) on many of these issues – but to impeach is drawing to an inside straight. Instead, take the pair we are now holding with the Benghazi and IRS scandal – which also needs a special prosecutor – and draw the card of public opinion.

We could end up with a full House – AND Senate – and if either scandal bears bitter fruit, it could win the hand for the nation and coming generations.

Impeachment could then be the final “raise.”

Nixon, reading the other players at the table, had the honor to leave the game before the final cards were drawn.

Would President Obama do likewise?