File this in your “here we go again” file:
Texas Republican Rep. Blake Farenthold said that Republicans could secure the votes to impeach Barack Obama in the House of Representatives. Farenthold was speaking at an open house held at a Civic Center in Luling, Texas, Saturday according to a YouTube video description and the Congressman’s online schedule. His answer came from a constituent’s question about conspiracy theories surrounding President Obama’s birth certificate.
“I think unfortunately the horse is already out of the barn on this, on the whole birth certificate issue,” Farenthold said. “The original Congress when his eligibility came up should have looked into it and they didn’t. I’m not sure how we fix it.”“You tie into a question I get a lot: ‘If everyone’s so unhappy with the president’s done, why don’t you impeach him?’” Farenthold continued. “I’ll give you a real frank answer about that: If we were to impeach the president tomorrow, you could probably get the votes in the House of Representatives to do it. But it would go to the Senate and he wouldn’t be convicted.”
The Texas congressman then described the impeachment process, mentioning the vote in the House and the trial in the Senate. Farenthold then said that the failed attempt to remove President Bill Clinton from office through the impeach process actually damaged the country.
It’s not easy to predict that after the mid-term elections somewhere along the line some Republicans will, in fact, try to find a reason to impeach Obama. Will it succeed? It didn’t exactly help the GOP’s prospects when the House voted teo impeach Bill Clinton. Can calmer heads prevail in the GOP? Yes – but there are FEWER calmer heads in today’s GOP with each passing year.
Talk about impeachment again underlines the sheer partisan hatred many Republicans hold for Obama. And the birth certificate issue? (SIGH) It’s unfortunately still not only an in issue for pompous millionaires with perpetually bad hair days.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.