Congress, Constitutional Law, Politics, Society

The Hill: Democrats Have Raised Impeachment Some 20 Times More Often Than Republicans

260px-capitol_building_full_viewI recently wrote on the issue of impeachment that has been reportedly so widely in the media. As I noted in the column and in prior interviews, there is no serious move toward impeachment by the Republicans and most of the impeachment talk has come from the White House and Democrats, including in fund-raising campaigns. Indeed, I was critical of the Washington Post column after one of the hearings in which I testified on executive over-reach. While the issue of impeachment was mentioned only a handful of times and usually to dismiss it as an option, the column was entitled “Republicans see One Remedy for Obama — Impeachment.” It seems that even denying impeachment as an option still constitutes discussing impeachment. Now The Hill newspaper has looked at the congressional record to see who is raising impeachment more often. The result was that Democrats raised the issue 20 times more often than Republicans, who barely uttered the “I” word.

The Hill found just 4 references to impeachment on the House and Senate floors by Republicans while finding 86 such references by Democrats.

Of course, the issue remains a cash cow for Democrats with millions being raised to fight off impeachment when the money could be just as well spent on chupacabra repellant. As of yet, President Obama has not committed an impeachable act and Speaker Boehner has steadfastly ruled out such an effort in the House.

The top three House Democratic leaders — Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), Whip Steny Hoyer (Md.) and Assistant Democratic Leader James Clyburn (S.C.) also have all been flogging the impeachment horse. The black caucus has also been active in raising the issue, including Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee who raised it 18 times. She is followed by Georgia Rep. Hank Johnson (six times), New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (nine times), CBC Chairwoman and Ohio Rep. Marcia Fudge (once), California Rep. Barbara Lee (twice), New Jersey Rep. Donald Payne (once), North Carolina Rep. G.K. Butterfield (twice) and Maryland Rep. Donna Edwards (once). Other members discussing impeachment are Reps. Kurt Schrader (Ore.), Bill Pascrell (N.J.), Steven Horsford (Nev.), Luis Gutierrez (Ill.), Louise Slaughter (N.Y.), Jackie Speier (Calif.), Chris Van Hollen (Md.) and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.), the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee.

Source: The Hill

261 thoughts on “The Hill: Democrats Have Raised Impeachment Some 20 Times More Often Than Republicans”

  1. Squeaky Fromme tried to assassinate Gerald Ford. I doubt she was hired by any high powered group.

    1. SWM – Squeaky Fromme was part of the hive thinking Manson Family. She could hardly be thought of as a rogue assassin.

  2. Paul C. Schulte

    Dred – you do try so hard. And it does appear that you have a problem with the truth.
    ========================
    Yep.

    Paul “the truth” S …

  4. Really, Paul, who sent Reagan’s attempted assassin? Seems to me he was just a very disturbed young man .I know some think that powerful, wealthy, ultra conservative Dallas people had something to do with Kennedy’s assassination but it has not been proven.

  5. Paul C. Schulte

    Jack – Obama deserves to be impeached and convicted but the political timing is not right.
    ======================
    The law of impeachment is based on right political timing sayeth the sage of old book stores.

    Who needs principle when you have right, far right, politics masked as law.

    1. Dredd – you cannot convict someone if you do not have enough votes on the jury. Did you ever take civics? Or were you awake during that class? Right now there are not enough votes to convict Obama, so why waste the energy to impeach him? If you get the votes to convict him, or you think you might be close enough, then impeach.

  6. For all you critical thinkers and history revisionists out there. Stop and ask, “WHY was Clinton under oath in the first place?”

    Crickets.

    If every President who committed hanky panky in office had been backed into a corner under oath, I daresay virtually all of them would have lied. Robert Heinlein spoke one of the Great Truths in his science fiction novel, “Stranger in a Strange Land:”

    “Everybody lies about sex.”

    1. Charlton – SOOOOOO, you are admitting that you have lied about sex. However, lying under oath is perjury. As a lawyer, Clinton both knew that and knew the penalty, yet chose to do it. His problem was that he had already told the American people, on national TV, that he had not had ‘sex with that woman.’

  7. Paul C. Schulte

    Dredd – do you have a problem with the truth?
    =================
    Let me translate: “the truth” in the old dust mite covered books with brown pages, this means “what Paul C. Shulte thinks is truth.”

  8. Paul C. Schulte

    … most assassins are not crazed. Most people who send assassins are not crazed.
    …
    ========================
    Since you rejected science you have not been thinking as clearly.

    But you do make up more statistics out of thin air than you once did.

    You should probably lose the old books that are covered with dust mites.

    1. Dred – you do try so hard. And it does appear that you have a problem with the truth.

  10. Bailers

    …
    What specific high crime or misdemeanor has he committed?
    …
    ===========================
    He smoketh pot once upon a time.

  11. Anon

    Charlton- You’re way too smart for this crap. Bill Clinton was not impeached for lying about getting a BJ. He was impeached for lying about getting a BJ under oath. I don’t care who you are, you don’t get to lie under oath.
    ========================
    This is old history right out of Paul the S’s oldest dictionary in duh world.

    The immuneotti came into existence recently, so now we have “too big to jail” which is the same as immune from prosecution, which is the same as too big to prosecute.

    They are everywhere, such as the military NSA, the CIA, and in all three branches of government (“big” is metaphorical).

    They are the scream of the crop.

  12. Bailers,

    I concur. I don’t see anything (that we can clearly establish) which would be an impeachable offense. However, I do see plenty of executive overreach (usurpation). Is the Judiciary the proper venue to address that?

    What Pres. Obama wants is an efficient government. When he can’t get that, he has decided that he will go around Congress and do what he thinks needs to be done on his own…thereby creating the efficient government he desires.

  13. on 1, August 8, 2014 at 11:08 amswarthmoremom
    Paul C. ” Joe Biden is keeping Obama from being impeached and probably from being assassinated.” Do you actually think that crazed assassins are thinking about Joe Biden?
    **************************
    Maybe he figures the crazed assassins think just like him.

  14. “Paul C. Schulte
    Jack – Obama deserves to be impeached and convicted but the political timing is not right.”

    What specific high crime or misdemeanor has he committed?

    Saying he is making multiple faulty interpretations of his power and the law doesn’t rise to the level of felonious conduct.

  15. Annie Because the 7 committee hearings on Benghazi found no wrongdoing by this pres they are convening an 8th, This is costing millions. Repealing the law of the land ACA 51 times and failing, has cost millions. They don’t care, the “fiscally responsible” party
    As for impeachment talk, did it include how many times repubs have said, wink, wink, this has nothing to with impeachment, we are not doing this in order to then go to impeachment etc. A denial is not a denial when the repubs keep saying, oh no, this is just about the executive order re ACA (of course repubs kept yelling, employer mandates, do something about them, theyre wrong, not enough time, etc so then the president did and is getting sued for it. The repubs have said too many exec orders but Mr. President since we have not done anything on immigration you need to take exec action.
    The repubs want everything both ways because they are so good at speaking out of both sides of their mouths so for instance they can say hey we didn’t bring up impeachment so often, etc.

  16. Paul C. ” Joe Biden is keeping Obama from being impeached and probably from being assassinated.” Do you actually think that crazed assassins are thinking about Joe Biden?

    1. SWM – most assassins are not crazed. Most people who send assassins are not crazed. You have to think to the results of your actions. This is something that Obama has problems with. However, forward thinking people think of the results of their actions. The result of the impeachment of Obama is that Joe Biden would be President. Now, to me, he is a bigger problem than Obama. It is like having the village idiot as President. I am sure assassins can see the same outcome.

  17. Money and fame is a great motivator. Makes abandoning one’s principles less painful.

  18. This is a semantic argument instead of a substantive argument. The number of times each side referred to impeachment in specific locations doesn’t really tell you much about whether or not the Republican base thirsts for impeachment against a president they have repeatedly denied is legitimate or even American. The lawsuit Republicans have filed is the most obvious example that Republicans want impeachment badly, but it won’t work to take the pressure off. Republicans don’t actually care about executive actions or they would have complained about them during President Bush’s term when such actions were used far more frequently, which they didn’t. What they want at the end of the day is to delegitimize the President so badly that they can claim that none of the results of his administration were legal or legitimate either.

    The fact that Boehner is trying to convince his caucus to avoid the issue doesn’t say much either, because he was also adamant that the government shutdown wasn’t going to happen just days before it did. There’s no substance to anything the Republicans do anymore. The only reason we haven’t already seen impeachment proceedings is because Democrats have control of the Senate and the Republicans can’t cause nearly as much damage right now when they would need Senate support, as opposed to the shut down where they only needed to do nothing. The Republicans have been placing their own interests before those of the country for many years now.

  19. Jack – Obama deserves to be impeached and convicted but the political timing is not right.

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