Will Impeachment Be A Primary Issue?

First, we need to distinguish between the impeachment of Eric Holder and Barack Obama. Eric Holder is in contempt of Congress. He is a lawless man who should have been impeached long ago.

The president is a separate matter. There are those who believe he has already established grounds for impeachment. When I did a search I was surprised at how worn this well-trod path happened to be. Tom Tancredo called for the 44th president's impeachment in 2010. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jul/22/the-case-for-impeachment/

Congressman Steve Stockman advocated impeachment in 2013.

And this from an Esquire portrait of Chuck Hagel.

The conversation beaches itself for a moment on that word — impeachment— spoken by a conservative Republican from a safe Senate seat in a reddish state. It's barely even whispered among the serious set in Washington, and it rings like a gong in the middle of the sentence, even though it flowed quite naturally out of the conversation he was having about how everybody had abandoned their responsibility to the country, and now there was a war going bad because of it.

http://www.esquire.com/features/chuckhagel0407


Did you catch that? "It's barely even whispered among the serious set in Washington."  Is that how the insiders now refer to themselves? The political class uses the same term that Vito Corleone uses to refer to the Turk? "Solazzo is a serious man..." But the I word now appears on the Beltway radar.

We have to respect "the serious set." Impeachment is not like marriage. You don't want to enter into this institution lightly. In the words of Joe Biden, oh let's just skip JB's most memorable quote.

Impeachment is not a frivolous matter. We are not one of those countries defined by its regimes. In those places, former leaders do not gracefully retire to the lecture circuit. They are imprisoned or tortured or killed. There was a lot of chatter about impeaching George Bush but even "the serious set" rejected that nonsense. But George Bush did not use the IRS to crush political opposition or use DOJ to intimidate donors or NSA to spy on reporter's families and on and on and on.

Attempting to use the IRS as a political weapon helped get Nixon impeached. Someone--quite possibly the White House--succeeded and succeeded big in using the IRS to stifle and silence Tea Party/Conservative/Religious groups. Nixon was an amateur compared to these tyrants.

Nixon was also impeached for obstructing justice. If it can be demonstrated that the White House obstructed/impeded/mislead investigators in Fast and Furious, Benghazi, MF Global, and of course, the IRS conspiracy, the I word would infiltrate serious set cocktail hours.

How does this become a campaign issue? I am not sure if Cantor or Ryan or Boehner would impeach even if the trails all lead back to you know who. They might look to the opinion polls that tell us that any rebuke of the pampered one is perceived as racist in nature. It would be good to hear from their own lips that they are committed to judging others based on "...the content of their character."

Karl Rove says the GOP has to find an issue beyond Obamacare. The serious set might not find that cause. The conservative power base on the other hand? They might have already found it.