COUNTDOWN TO OBAMA & BIDEN RESIGNATIONS

If Republicans retake both Houses of Congress this November, President Obama and Vice-President Biden should resign after the new Congress is seated in early January 2011. Following the U.S. Constitution and Federal Law, the person next in line to the Presidency would be the Speaker of the House. If the House were controlled by Republicans, then they would choose the next Speaker and thus the President. It would be only appropriate that Sarah Palin, Scott Brown, or some other Republican should govern the country with the Republican-controlled Congress.

The utter failure to enact anything of significance during 2009 can be partially blamed upon various Blue-Dog Democrats in the House and particularly the Senate. The Stimulus bill was too small and misdirected. The continuing misguided bank bailouts, the extension of TARP, and the failure to promptly enact any meaningful financial regulations were also huge failures. The failure to permit homeowners to modify their mortgages in bankruptcy was also economically and politically foolish. The 10-month waste of time called Healthcare reform was the final insult and nail in the Democratic coffin. There is only a snowball’s chance in Hell that any of these proposals will be passed by the dysfunctional Democrat party before the Midterm elections.

Throughout this entire process, the President was the head of the Democratic Party and leader of the largest majorities in both legislative Houses. President Obama screwed up royally in 2009 for all his naïve efforts at bi-partisanship and post-partisanship. He should have concentrated on getting things accomplished and quickly. He let Republicans frame the arguments and overall debate. He and his advisers were clueless on what was really going on across the country with respect to rising unemployment, business failures, residential and commercial real estate foreclosures, and many other “bread and butter” issues that voters tend to dwell upon – particularly if frighteningly large numbers of them are losing their jobs and homes.

The President imposed no party discipline within the Democratic ranks. He has been more concerned about being popular than respected, yet alone feared. He has had real no sense of his limited window of opportunity. He squandered far too many opportunities and instead gave more and more meaningless pretty and empty speeches. He accepted a Nobel Peace Prize for which he was wholly unqualified instead of graciously declining it.

After President Bush 43 lost Republican control over Congress in November 2006, the last 2 years of his lame-duck term were even more excruciating in that absolutely nothing was addressed. He effectively moved to Crawford, TX and put half the country and its economy on auto-pilot, and the other half in the trustworthy hands of the out-of-control financial sector. It would have been better had he resigned at that point as well.

The Constitution mandates different 2, 4 and 6 year terms for most Federal office-holders, but it does not prohibit resignations or impeachments to cut off those terms. Hell, President Clinton was impeached for lying about having an affair with an intern so almost anything the opposition doesn’t like about a President is sufficient grounds for impeachment.

There has never been a “successful 1-term Presidency.” Successful Presidents get re-elected. Thus President Obama will not likely comfort himself with that moniker but he’ll have a very lucrative career back in teaching, making speeches, and leading other ex-Presidents on various global humanitarian projects.

Republicans successfully shifted the blame for all their massive policy mistakes onto President Obama long before the financial crash in 2008 to the point in time when he first took office as a U.S. Senator in a slightly Democratically-controlled Senate in January 2007. (Thus every job lost in the U.S. since 2007 is solely his fault, particularly since he is an avowed socialist Nigerian bent on destroying the country on behalf of China and Iran.) They will continue to successfully blame him for all our country’s woes even if he resigns in January 2011, until at least January 2013 and then possibly for the subsequent 4 years of Republican rule. This country desperately needs “scapegoats” and President Obama would fit the bill. Former Vice-President Al Gore is solely responsible for all the bad weather on the planet as per the weathermen on Fox News.

It is more than likely that nothing of significance will occur in Washington before the 2012 general elections. We will have a perpetually “Mexican Standoff” between an ineffectual, weak and rejected Democratic President, and a polar-opposite re-energized angry Republican Party. Our country will have to muddle through while Washington is in the grips of complete political paralysis and legislative gridlock. The country faces too many massive problems that should be tackled, at least partially by the party chosen by the majority of the country to lead.

Republicans should consider former Florida Governor Jeb Bush as their new leader. He’s the taller, younger brother of Bush 43 who now looks pretty good in retrospect to many uneducated, lazy and angry Americans who have short attention spans, and no knowledge of history or economics. Gov. Jeb met his Latina spouse while studying in Mexico. They both are conservative Roman Catholics who speak both English and Spanish. This would kill the alleged demographic lock on Latino/Hispanic voters by the Democratic Party. A third Bush Presidency would ensure perpetual Republican control as the U.S. sinks to its inevitable Gotterdammerung global political, economic, military and cultural collapse within the next 2 decades.

The Democrats only had 2 years to get things accomplished. So far, they have failed miserably by their own accounts and things look pretty bleak for the balance of 2010. If Republicans take Congress by anything greater than 1 vote margins, President Obama will be deemed a complete failure and a lame-duck 1-term President. Even if Republicans come shy of actual majorities, many conservative Democrats will jump ship and shift the power in Washington. The easily-bored American electorate and our 24/7 info-entertainment shallow News Media have no patience and constantly need new events, issues, celebrities and leaders to keep us perpetually entertained as the country slouches toward complete global irrelevance.

It would be better for the country if President Obama and Vice-President Biden to resign in favor of a Republican President selected by the New Republican House of Representatives in January 2011. If The President and Vice-President do not resign, then Congress should impeach them in a long, drawn-out process that should make it through the summer of 2012.

A Republican Congress really has no intention of enacting financial or healthcare reform, helping homeowners, spending governmental money stimulating new public and private jobs, or anything else the Democrats failed to address during 2009 and 2010. They would really have a pretty open calendar perfect for another impeachment charade. Even natural or man-made disasters cannot alter their overall policies of complete inaction and calls for more tax cuts.

If they are in charge again after 2011, Republicans will again try to cut taxes – particularly for the wealthy, large corporations, and major campaign contributors and advertisers. They might actually drastically cut all domestic spending, particularly for the pesky EPA, Justice Department, Air Traffic Control, Departments of Energy, Education and Transportation and still end up about 1 trillion dollars in the hole.

Republicans really have to kill the paltry $8 billion for high speed and conventional rail projects – and the $1.5 billion annual subsidy for Amtrak that even President Reagan couldn’t kill. Let’s get back at Warren Buffet for supporting Democrats and kill all trains and railroads in the U.S. now that he bought BNSF Railroad.

They could eliminate the paltry 18.3 cent per gallon federal gasoline tax to spite all those people calling for solar, wind and alternative energy sources. Their corporate friends such as Exxon-Mobil and terrorist-funding oil-rich states will quickly raise gas prices to swallow the savings, but long-term thinking is not a Republican forte.

They would also try to stimulate the economy (or certain parts of it) by expanding Defense spending and getting us into a few more endless wars. We could stay in Iraq and Afghanistan for another 100 years as Senator John McCain suggested, spending over $20 billion a month in 2 countries that have a combined annual GDP of just $23 billion. (Couldn’t we save a ton of money and many lives – plus engender global goodwill – by leaving immediately and sending both countries a monthly check of just $2 billion each to spend or squander as they please?)

Some Republicans are livid about the cuts to NASA. Let’s build a $6 trillion military base on the moon so we won’t lose it to the Chinese, even though we’ll already have lost most of our real economy and all effective financial power to them. The base would also be insurance in the event global climate change is real and we have to ship our wealthy citizens and Republican ruling class to a new home while the rest of humanity deals with the mess they left back here on earth. Spend our tax dollars on anything loony but directly helping the majority of American citizens.

These Republican policies will likely increase – not decrease – projected Federal budgets but they can always blame “Big Government” Democrats for that. It seems to always work at election time. Republicans can enact their very limited agenda because most provisions can be passed by simple majorities under reconciliation terms applying to both the House and Senate. People can vociferously dislike what Republicans do – but dammit – they know how to get things done – unlike Democrats.

It was fun Democrats, but the party is almost over. You don’t have the ability, will or “Cojones” to actually enact any of your policies or even run a major government. Voters are really upset with you and they are in no mood to think rationally. It will soon be time to move on – possibly you should all move to New York and California and try to solve the problems of those 2 states first before tackling anything larger. Perhaps you might start even smaller – solving the massive problems facing just Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and Buffalo, before moving up the geographic map. These cities have been perpetually in Democratic control and they are still all major urban failures. If you can’t get these places right, why should voters trust you with anything larger?

Marc Pascal is still in a Ground-Hog Day funk but happily ranting (tongue in cheek) from rainy Phoenix, AZ.