Note to Republicans: Impeach Bush
by Jonathan David Morris
jdm@readjdm.com

Special to The Libertarian Enterprise

It's great to see so many Republicans jumping off the George W. Bush bandwagon. Now that it's considered political suicide for the GOP to support its own president, maybe we'll finally have a party in Washington with the guts to impeach him.

I don't care how crazy or drastic you think this sounds. I don't care if it makes you cringe. There's nothing extremist about it. The Constitution gives us a way of holding these guys accountable for a reason. In the late 1990s, we spent a whole year talking about Bill Clinton's penis. If we could impeach Bill Clinton for not having sex with that woman, Monica Lewinsky, then impeaching George Bush should be the simplest, most straightforward decision we've ever made.

There are people who will tell you impeachment is "not what this country needs right now." I disagree. I think it's exactly what this country needs right now—while there's still time to fire this president. If this were about his last 18 months in office, I'd say it wasn't worth it. But it's about something more than that. It's about making sure no one ever tries to duplicate what he did in his first six and a half years.

The Bush Doctrine took us into Iraq under the premise that we should deal with grave and gathering threats before they strike us. By that very same logic, if we don't impeach Bush, we'll be telling future presidents it's okay to be even worse than him.

If we don't impeach Bush, we'll be telling future presidents to use torture, hold people without trial, and break international treaties.

If we don't impeach Bush, we'll be telling future presidents to start whatever domestic surveillance programs they desire, and get us into whatever wars they feel like getting us into.

If we don't impeach Bush, we'll be telling future presidents to issue hundreds of "signing statements," so they don't have to follow the new laws they're attached to. In fact, if we don't impeach Bush, we'll be telling future presidents to ignore laws altogether.

At every level, and in every conceivable way, the Bush administration has fought checks and balances, fought for more power, and fought to consolidate government functions under the concept of the Unitary Executive (i.e., absolute rule). This president has sought to redefine the Constitutional powers of his office, and he's openly, regularly defied both the courts and the United States Congress to stop him from doing what he feels like doing, whenever he feels like doing it. If we fail to impeach this president, we'll be saying we're a-ok with that.

Well, even if you are a-ok with that—even if you think George Bush has the best of intentions—we still need to hold him accountable, because the whole idea is he doesn't think he should be. If we don't impeach this president, we'll be telling both him as well as his successors we honestly just don't care.

Luckily, Iraq and immigration are finally finishing off George Bush's remaining supporters. Since we know we can't count on Democrats to do this, it's time for Republicans to step up.

If you're a Republican, do your party a favor—do all of us a favor—and lead the charge for impeaching this president. We don't know who, and we don't know when, but we know there will be someone worse if we don't.

Jonathan David Morris writes from Philadelphia. He can be reached at jdm@readjdm.com.

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