GOP Begins Whispers of Impeaching Obama
There’s no “I” in GOP. At least not yet officially…

by
Bill Straub

August 27, 2013 - 12:06 am

WASHINGTON — Just eight months after being sworn in for a second four-year term, President Obama is the subject of impeachment talk among several Republican lawmakers.

Rep. Kerry Bentivolio, R-MI, told supporters attending a recent Birmingham/Bloomfield Republican Club meeting that forcing Obama from office less than a year after he achieved a 5 million-vote victory over GOP rival Mitt Romney would be “a dream come true.”

Rep. Blake Farenthold, R-TX, told those attending a town hall meeting in Luling that there are sufficient votes in the House of Representatives to adopt a bill of impeachment. But he noted that the Democratic-controlled Senate is unlikely to find the president guilty of any high crimes or misdemeanors as required by the U.S. Constitution.

“If we were to impeach the president tomorrow, you could probably get the votes in the House of Representatives to do it,” he said. “But it would go to the Senate, and he wouldn’t get convicted.”

Earlier this year, Rep. Steve Stockman, R-TX, threatened to seek Obama’s impeachment if he attempted to adopt stricter gun control measures through executive order.

The impeachment discussion isn’t limited to the House side. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK, who presents himself as a friend of the president, told a crowd in Muscogee that Obama is drawing “perilously close” to the standards required for ouster.

“I think there’s some intended violation of law in this administration but I also think there’s a ton of incompetence,” Coburn said, adding that if the problems continue, “I think we’re going to have another constitutional crisis in our country in terms of the president.”

Coburn’s fellow Oklahoman, Republican Sen. James Inhofe, suggested as early as May that Obama could face impeachment over last year’s terrorist attack on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, that led to the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others. Inhofe, in a radio interview on The Rusty Humphries Show, said that the administration engaged in the “greatest cover-up in American history” over the attack and added, “People may be starting to use the I-word before too long,”

Inhofe said he believed outrage over Benghazi would endure and asserted that Obama’s impeachment could come after the 2014 midterm elections if the GOP regains control of the Senate.

And Sen. Ted Cruz, R-TX, being talked up among conservatives as a GOP presidential candidate in 2016, sidestepped a query during a town hall meeting in Conroe regarding why there has been no attempt to impeach Obama by acknowledging, “It’s a good question.”

“I’ll tell you the simplest answer — to successfully impeach a president you need the votes in the U.S. Senate,” Cruz said. Those votes are unavailable because the chamber is controlled by Democrats.

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