Impeachment Bites Back
The Democrats thought they had a pretty easy day when they brought a bill for impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney up for vote. Then the Republicans decided not to play along. A vote to kill the bill was winning when the Republicans decided to not kill the bill and force the debate.
House Republicans clearly enjoyed watching Democratic leaders squirm during the series of votes, which lasted more than one hour.
“The determination was made that if Democrats are going to waste time and resources with a resolution like this, then it should be thoroughly debated,” said Brian Kennedy, the spokesman for Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), adding that the charges against Cheney were “ludicrous.”
Clearly, the Democrats went into this thinking that the bill would get shot down and they could just claim that they had tried. They had no intention of it actually getting to a debate. And of course, the Democrats are trying to put some spin on it.
Nadeam Elshami, a spokesman for Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), accused Republicans of “wasting time.”
“They’re voting to impeach the vice president. What does that say about the support for President Bush in the Republican Conference?” he added, trying to put the best face on a situation Democratic leaders had wanted to avoid.
No, they voted to not kill a bill that will impeach the Vice President if passed. There is a difference. What they did vote for was a debate on the subject. And what’s funnier is that the reason for that was to expose the rift between Presidential Candidate Dennis Kucinich and the Majority leaders Hoyer and Pelosi who have stated that an impeachment proceeding would be useless this late into the term.
I’ve always thought that current sitting legislators who are running for another office should be made to step down from their current office. They should be judged by what they have done when not trying to win an election, not what they do during the run-up to the election. As soon as they declare their candidacy, they start doing exactly what they think the party and the people want to see them doing.