Impeachment bullying 
 

By Jim Killebrew

[August 09, 2014]  Remember the comics years ago with the bully kicking the sand in the face of the smaller, younger kid and the marketing was advertising the Charles Atlas muscle-building program? It was the bully who was the antagonist with the kicking the sand in the face behavior that heated up the ire of those who read the advertisement. It was the intention of the bully to beat up the less-than-able person who was being wronged. Of course, if the victimized person did the right thing by taking action and purchasing the Charles Atlas muscle-building program and learning that program, the bully would eventually receive his comeuppance.

It appears we are seeing something similar with the President wanting to reach beyond his executive authority as he circumvents the Congress. It is like he is kicking sand in the face of Congress and taunting them with the threat of "taking matters into his own hands." More specifically, it is the republicans in Congress he is taunting. The democrats seem to be playing along with him; they are talking about "impeachment" about 20 times more often and from more people than the republicans are talking about it. When the President gets in front of his receptive crowds at his fundraisers he begins to taunt the republicans with the impeachment issue. "They want to sue me," he says, "for doing my job." This is reminiscent of the bully kicking the sand in the face of the 90-pound weakling.

The reason it is lies in the fact that it is purely political. The democrats have reached back in the archives and recall when former President Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives for lying to Congress and the American people. The Senate failed to convict and it became essentially a joke with Bill Clinton coming out the winner. The republicans in the House were branded as losers and the foibles of the Clinton era became late-night fodder. The President now is looking at his own poll numbers and his slumping popularity and betting if he can goad the republicans into going for impeachment they will be the laughing stock to his political base and it will stimulate them to get out to the polls in November and the Senate will not be lost.

The irony of it is the President has perfected his "leading from behind" strategy and consequently the United States looks weakened. We have many bullies in the world now who are kicking the sand in the face of the 90-pound weakling perceived as the United States. The leaders around the world are not looking at the President as a leader with strength, they know him as a weakling who apologizes to the leftist leaders around the world; a leader who believes the poor conditions in the world order are a result of America's treating everyone unfairly. So now we can click off the crisis situations from Iran to Russia. The Middle East is exploding with Israel having to defend itself against the terrorists Hamas. The Russians have already taken a chunk of Ukraine by invading Crimea, and now stand ready to take the rest of the country as well. ISIS has taken a great amount of Syria and Iraq claiming the establishment of their caliphate as a base of operations to carry out terror attacks throughout the Middle East and the world. Throughout the world the wars are raging, Christians are being murdered, ethnic cleansing is being carried out, genocide is being used as part of the terrorists' mode of operation, and at home we are experiencing a complete break-down of our border security with no telling who is being infiltrated into the country to wreaking havoc through terror.

So now, it seems the only thing on the President's mind is how he can keep campaigning. From his fundraisers and vacations he continues to "kick the sand" into the eyes of his political enemies. He has decided seemingly from what he talks about to push the envelope of over-reaching his Constitutional authority as to goad the opposition into a Constitutional crisis just to politicize his position for maintaining the Senate majority in November to firmly ensconce Harry Reid as Senate Leader and keep the majority to block any meaningful legislation coming from the House. If he really wanted to work with the Congress the way he has said he does, he would simply ask Harry Reid to stop blocking all the bills passed by the House of Representatives and bring them up for debate and vote in the Senate. The problem with that is both he and Harry Reid know there are many of the bills related to the economy, immigration, border security, surveillance of American citizenry, sanctions against other countries, investigations into various crisis would likely not go well for the President or Senate Leader.

So instead, valuable time and energy is wasted while the world burns and the country approaches a Constitutional crisis while the President bullies those opponents into something he thinks will bring a favorable outcome for him politically. Where have all the statesmen gone? It appears the President believes in his mantra, "Don't let a good crisis go to waste." What could be better than crisis around the world and domestically? Better still, create a new one: A Constitutional crisis that will re-direct all the negative attention away from him and his leading from behind policies onto the republicans in the House of Representatives. Who needs a Statesman when you have such a skilled politician?

I am just hoping the House of Representatives and the American people who are getting the sand kicked into their faces wake up and do the right thing. America needs the bullies of our political system to receive their just comeuppance.

[By JIM KILLEBREW]