The costly fantasy of impeaching Obama

The Democrats owe a growing debt to the Republican red-hots pursuing the fantasy of impeaching Barack Obama. They’re collecting a lot of cash — probably not as much as they claim, but a lot — from the naive and excitable folks in the Democratic base. Outrage is easily convertible to cash, as every bagman knows, and the Republicans should get a cut of it. Fair is fair.

Sarah Palin, who as a former governor knows better than to confuse hoping with doing, is leading the baying hounds this week. She told an audience the other day that “the many impeachable offenses of President Obama can no longer be ignored. If after all this, he’s not impeachable, then no one is.”

She’s right about that second part. No one is. We’ve tried impeachment twice, and neither time the weapon worked. That’s because the impeachment of a president is first a political act, an indictment by the House of Representatives, and only then a trial in the Senate. The Founders didn’t intend it to be easy. The prosecutors must have not only a solid legal case, but an airtight political case as well.

Barack Obama has lost the confidence of much of the public, but proving him guilty of “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” would necessarily be the work of “high politics and runaway partisanship,” and there’s nothing in the law or the Constitution against that. Many people have concluded that the president is an incompetent jerk, but that’s not impeachable.

More