Conservative Writer On Push For Impeaching Pres. Obama: 'The Issue Here Is Presidential Lawlessness'
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Chris Stigall talked with conservative writer Andrew McCarthy on Talk Radio 1210 WPHT about the increasing political chatter to impeach President Obama.
Conservative Writer Andrew McCarthy
McCarthy is the author of the Faithless Execution: Building the Case for Obama's Impeachment.
He said the motivation for Republicans, whether or not they ever vote on impeachment, should be to stop the President from issuing executive orders.
"I've actually been credited or blamed, depending on your perspective, with injecting the country with impeachment fever according to Media Matters, as I understand it…The issue here is Presidential lawlessness. That is what the Republicans ought to be driving to the fore. It's not only good politics, it's important to the country. You have to have a credible impeachment remedy to keep a rogue President in check," McCarthy explained.
McCarthy was critical of Congressional Republicans for preemptively rejecting the consideration of impeachment.
"They won't use the Constitutional muscles that the framers gave them. They don't even want to talk about impeachment.
They want to shoot anybody who even mentions it. And yet, they want to tell you they're a credible opposition against President Obama's lawlessness. A lot of us who are talking about impeachment are doing it reluctantly, doing it in recognition of the fact that it would be a mistake to file articles of impeachment unless you had public support for removing the President and have tried to go about it carefully and responsibly. They may say that that's a non-starter, but the fact of the matter is the President's opposition is doing nothing. [Speaker of the House John] Boehner's answer to all this is to file a lawsuit. Maybe we'll get some Obama federal judge five years from now to make a ruling," he commented.
McCarthy believes the political environment today is far different than when Republicans impeached President Clinton in 1998.
"They've learned absolutely the wrong lessons from Clinton, which number one, are: don't file articles of Impeachment until you have cultivated public support and if you haven't, then don't. The second thing though is, the more attenuated Presidential misconduct is from the core obligations or duties of the Presidency, the less likely it is that you're going to get political support. With Obama, we're not talking about the same kind of misconduct we're talking about with Clinton. With Obama you're talking about an actual systematic assault on our Constitutional governing order, which is dimensions more serious than what Clinton was involved in," McCarthy said.
