Get ready for the False Equivalency Police to be sent out in force as we discuss a f-a-c-t: the threat of the impeachment is proving to be a fundraising bonanza for BOTH two major political parties, and both are grabbing the I-ball and running with it.
Forget the fact that (at this stage of the game) polls don’t show a national clamor for impeachment. For every reaction there is a reaction — and The Daily Beast’s John Avlon documents it:
Silly season has started—and both parties are trying to fund-raise off the fringe.
One-third of Americans now say that President Obama should be impeached, according to a CNN/ORC poll. This carries about as much constitutional weight as previous free-floating anxieties about the president being secretly Muslim, communist or born in Kenya.
The partisan breakdown of the Impeach Obama crowd is roughly what you’d expect. Fifty-seven percent of Republicans say they support impeachment and 35 percent of independents, with a very-confused 13 percent of Democrats bringing up the caboose.
But just because you’re a few beers short of a six-pack doesn’t mean you’re not somebody’s constituent—and so a small but determined band of dim-witted congressmen and conservative racketeers keep ratcheting up the impeachment rhetoric as a way of agitating the base ahead of the typically low-turnout, high-intensity, mid-term elections.
As usual in the Republican party’s second decade in the 21st century, the drum-beat for impeachment eminates from the Republican Party’s most partisan, tiresomely predictable (for independents, moderates and centrists) political personalities, who then whip up their loyal minions into pressuring weak-kneed politicos to say “Me, too!!” And, yes, one of them is former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin– that living, breathing monument to Arizona John McCain’s flaws as a serious, thoughtful decision maker. And the other — no surprise, again — from talk radio’s Mark Levin, nemesis of MSNBC’s more traditionally conservative “Morning Joe” namesake, who Levin calls “The Morning Schmo.” Avlon notes that some GOPers are trying to put distance from the call to do to Obama what Republicans did to Bill Clinton that boosted Clinton’s numbers:
But Speaker Boehner wants no part in this political suicide march. When asked about Palin’s call for impeachment, he dismissed her coolly. His long-promised (but so far unspecified) effort to sue President Obama is seen as an effort to deflect impeachment calls while still harnessing conservative anger at what they see as President Obama’s executive office over-reach. This past weekend, newly minted House Majority Whip Steve Scalise repeatedly refused to say whether he supported impeachment efforts when grilled by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday.
The reason for the awkward dodge is clear. Impeachment talk is nothing more than the latest episode in the GOP’s six-year effort to harness Obama Derangement Syndrome for grass-roots donations and voter turnout while maintaining a degree of plausible deniability.
But this is a dangerous game with high potential for backlash. After all, the flipside to the 33% means that two-thirds of Americans believe that Obama should not be impeached and 78% say that impeachment should only be invoked for a serious crime like treason or bribery—which even the most unhinged Obama opponent.
A reality: some voters are disappointed in Obama but would look with disgust at an effort to impeach him as a reminder why they voted against Republicans and not necessarily for Democrats in the first place. The Democrats clearly can see how a serious move or obesession by the conservative political entertainment complex could make some voters not only return home, but cough up some money:
White House senior adviser Dan Pfieffer pronounced himself very concerned about the possibility of impeachment at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast with reporters. “I saw a poll today that had a huge portion of the Republican Party base saying they supported impeaching the president. A lot of people in this town laugh that off. I would not discount that possibility.”
Hours later, the Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee began to furiously fund-raise off the crazy, using media reports of Pfeiffer’s comments to declare that “the White House sees impeachment as a serious threat” and “Democratic Headquarters is at full RED ALERT.” A flurry of emails continued over the weekend, culminating in what they claimed were $2 million in new donations.
Beyond the hysterics that fundraising emails use to scare donors into opening their wallets, the whole incident provides an example of the feedback loop of modern politics—one side’s extremes quickly becomes a fundraising call to arms for the other. Nobody wins, but the professional partisans get to pocket cash by fanning the flames.
Democrats are trying to call Republicans’ bluff—there’s nothing they’d love more than an election-eve example of the Stockholm syndrome that seems to afflict the GOP leadership. Last time, Ted Cruz & Co. convinced their party to shut down the government without a plan past freefall and it all ended predictably. Democrats want to be thrown in that brier patch—it might be their best chance to win the midterms.
But you can’t convince some hardcore far-right Republicans that Cruz & Co morphed into Republican Party flop sweat.
If some truths are self-evident, Avlon points to one of the most self-evident of all: when it comes to impeachment — as it comes to many issues — there is no shortage of partisans defending or dissing an action they once dissed or defended:
Executive over-reach was never much of a concern for conservatives not named Ron Paul when their party controlled the executive branch. Republican reaction to Kucinich & Co was predictable: 86% of Republicans said Bush should not be impeached, calling it absurd, extreme and an outrage.
These terms still apply even when the other guy is in the Oval Office. We debase our democracy by playing the impeachment card too casually—and it’s particularly offensive when its done by puffed-up, self-appointed defenders of the constitution with a profit motive.
You betcha.
Meanwhile, Scarborough offers some advice on how Republicans should handle questions about impeachment if they’re pressured to give an answer:
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.