You can be "too prudent" in politics, I suppose, and end up as a mushy moderate afraid to offend anyone. But the
Conservative Daily people don't have that problem. I had started getting their emails about half a year ago even though I hadn't signed up for them. As a conservative, I agree with most of what they believe in. Their main action item, however, is strategic nonsense, namely
the impeachment of Barack Obama. Check that search link; it's pretty much a topic in every email they send me, and I suppose they are proud that they don't let weak-kneed cowards like me talk them into pushing for more reasonable goals such as electing conservatives like
Mia Love or fighting Obamacare like the good people at
Health Care Compact.
But here's my question. What happens in the off-chance that they succeed at impeachment of President Obama? Basically they would have spent a large amount of political capital to purchase (drum roll...)
President Joseph Biden! It would be a slight variation on Marvel's
HYDRA villain myth: "cut off one head and three-eighths of a head shall take its place." I also can imagine a cheesy K-tel announcer's voice:
"But wait... that's not all. You will also receive a complimentary Vice President Hillary Clinton free of charge!" Yep--all teed up for her 2016 run.
Of course I think that these sort of groups are really just collecting money for vanity causes which they know won't succeed. And they are only one of the groups from which I get crazy emails. It does irritate me that they probably bought my email from a more legitimate source, but I don't want to restrict their freedom of speech or the ability of both mailing list buyers and sellers to engage in commerce. That's why I've posted my thoughts on
Conservative Daily here, along with a general warning based on
Churchill's wisdom concerning strategy and results. I've become very wary of posers and shysters in the world of the "tea party" and conservatism at large; of course
I'm not the first nor the smartest to notice. My other action was to unsubscribe from their emails.
Yeah, I'd agree with your take about impeachment as a strategy. I think one thing we've learned from the imminent impeachment of Nixon and the impeachment of Clinton is that it is unwise to impeach for political reasons, or for reasons that appear to be political.
ReplyDeleteIOW, if you are going to impeach a president, you need grownups from both parties to participate (ala Nixon). The tool should be used for such crimes that both political sides are willing to notice.
Not that grounds for impeachment don't necessarily exist today -- that'll depend on whether they can run the IRS scandal to ground. (Nixon's articles of impeachment included abuse of power via the IRS.) The problem today is that we are generally lacking grownups among the Dems.
Right. If you had a group with the membership of the No Labels organization pushing for something as drastic as impeachment then everyone would take them seriously.
DeleteWRT Huntsman and the other no-labelers, I think their greatest accomplishment may turn out to be curing insomnia.
The best way to change the political landscape is to win more elections. Let's hope this is a good year for conservatives.
DeleteI agree wiith you Pauli!
ReplyDeleteI think the cliche I'd throw out here is, in the burning beauty of your passionate feelings "don't put the cart before the horse".
ReplyDeleteLike Pik says, the crime pulls the impeachment, not the other way around. Establish the impeachable crime clearly and strongly enough and the impeachment will follow.
I can just see a wild-eyed person on the right saying something like "Well, dang it, these people are trying to do the right thing by getting rid of Obama! They're patriots who really care about the country! They're not backing down like all these other people!" and then sending them some money. That's basically how Ron Paul raised a lot of money from his vanity runs for President.
DeleteIn this particular case, we ought not forget the elephant in the room that is the race card. The martyrdom would be laid on thick.
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