Republicans Pray to Base
16 March 2006 8:03 am by Taylor Marsh
Republicans Pray to Base
“Impeachment, coming your way if there are changes
in who controls the House eight months from now,” Paul Weyrich, a veteran
conservative organizer, declared last month in an e-mail newsletter.The threat of impeachment, Mr. Weyrich suggested, was
one of the only factors that could inspire the Republican Party's demoralized
base to go to the polls. With “impeachment on the horizon,” he wrote,
“maybe, just maybe, conservatives would not stay at home after all.”(snip)
“This is such a gift,” the conservative commentator
Rush Limbaugh told listeners on his syndicated radio program on Monday, saying
the Democrats were fulfilling his predictions. “They have to go back
to this impeachment thing,” he said.
Call
for Censure Is Rallying Cry to Bush's Base
Breaking News! Censure excites base to Bush's side! All is not
lost!
Republican base, phone home, please, the president isn't kidding.
He's getting a little nervous, while the Republicans in charge try to figure
out how to spin this story to stop it in its tracks, or at the very least, turn
it to their advantage.
However, it's unlikely that Lincoln Chafee will be picking up
the phone just yet. He evidently doesn't take his talking points from Rush.
Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee, who cast a protest
vote against President Bush's reelection in 2004, says he won't rule out support
for what he calls the “drastic” penalty of a formal Senate censure
of Mr. Bush. Chafee agrees with Sen. Russell D. Feingold that the president
acted illegally when he launched an antiterrorism program of warrantless wiretaps
of some U.S. citizens, he said Tuesday. But Chafee, a Republican, currently
does not support the Wisconsin Democrat's proposal to punish the president with
a censure, he said. “Everything should occur in steps,” Chafee said
in an interview citing, for instance, the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearings
on the wiretapping program. Chafee was asked whether those steps might lead
to a censure of Mr. Bush that he would support. “I know you want me to
go there,” Chafee said, but he did not answer the question directly.
Chafee
refuses to rule out voting to censure Bush
With the congressional break coming up there won't be any closure
to make Democrats feel easier. The silence from Senate Democrats hasn't quieted
the dissent among the rest of us, however. We want accountability, and a break in the
action isn't going to change that fact.
Something interesting happened to me yesterday. I ran into a woman, a Democrat, and one thing led to another and we got to talking about politics. She said that the Democrats are so spineless she doubted they'd ever do anything to stop Bush. When I said they'd finally taken action and explained Feingold's censure resolution, she SHREIKED with glee. She hadn't heard or read anything about it, but was thrilled to hear the news and couldn't wait to hear more.
Censure is out in the air, ready for debate, with one thing clear. We need to keep talking about it. Because senators are going to eventually have to figure out how they reconcile the reality
that President Bush broke the law, with their unwillingness to hold him accountable.
Are sentators really ready to say, through inaction and apathy, that the president
is above the law? Lincoln Chafee isn't there yet and it's likely others aren't either.
