http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/13242#comment
"A Republican Woman asks why Democrats do not demand Impeachment
Submitted by davidswanson on Mon, 2006-07-24 08:00. Impeachment
By Melinda Pillsbury-Foster
"The tea was held upstairs, past open doors that held the portraits of First Ladies and mementos of previous administrations. I don't think I will be having tea with Laura Bush again."
I wrote the above to appear in a newsletter for the National Federation of Republican Women soon after the event. I had gotten my invitation to the White House Tea as a Regent for NFRW. The sandwiches were delicious - but subsequent events have persuaded me that what America needs most is an impeachment and more honesty in politics. Since it is clear the Republicans are not going to clean their own house I am urging Democrats to act now and remove both President Bush and Vice President Cheney from office.
As a long time Republican who worked for Barry Goldwater I have watched with dismay as events play out in the Administration of George W. Bush and Richard Cheney. The reasons grow more compelling every day.
It is not that our military are dying in a war, but that the war was sold with lies and that the real reason over 2,5000 Americans and God knows now many Iraqis have been killed is to stop the flow of oil to France and Russia. Those countries had just signed an oil deal with Saddam Hussein when the war began.
As events played out it became gut wrenchingly obvious to me that Bush and Cheney had not just overlooked their oaths of office; they had shredded the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, documents that any American should respect. Torture in the name of freedom? Taping Americans in the name of security? Someone has obviously lost their mind or is following an agenda that has nothing to do with their rhetoric.
I understand why Republicans can't take this necessary step; the Republican Party was quietly taken over by the NeoCons who run the Bush Administration, starting a while ago. In California they marched into the Republican State Convention several years back and just took over, overthrowing leadership that really represented the grassroots. Exerting control happens in many different ways and Rove most probably made sure of that first.
Republicans, the kind of people who believed and lived the ideas of Barry Goldwater, low taxation, local government, and individual rights, have been marginalized throughout the Republican Party. The only people left in positions of authority, for the most part, are either NeoCons or NeoCon sympathizers. Long time organizations like the Republican Assemblies, the John Birch Society, and the newly formed Republican Liberty Caucus despise Bush and understand that we stand on the brink of fascism. They do nothing but wring their hands, unfortunately. Some of that is probably fear; some comes from the Republican Command, "Thou shalt not speak evil of another Republican." I disagree obviously.
Political parties are just tools we use to work for an agenda agreed on by those who are active. If we owe loyalty to anything it is to the principles for which America was founded. Today we have confused the word, 'rights,' with 'privileges.' Rights are not a list of specifics, they are the acknowledgment that each of us is born possessed of inherent rights to act, own the property we earn, and to be free in our own persons. That is Jefferson's, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Converting those God given rights to privileges made all of us subject to government when the whole ideas was that our freedom existed before any government we adopted as a tool for ordering our human world.
Loyalty to a political party should never be stronger than your loyalty to that original vision of a people coming together to govern themselves using persuasion and consent. Members of Congress should burn their party membership cards before being sworn. It is as if you left loyalty to your hammer, a tool, instead of to the family you love who live in the house you built using that tool.
I have been wondering for a long time why Democrats have not taken action. John Conyers has proposed a Censure, a good start. Others outside Congress are talking about impeachment. But nothing happens. Why is the Democratic faction of Congress tip toeing around, pretending that all is well in Congressland? http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060109/motion_for_censure
I have a nasty streak of cynicism so answers did occur to me. I hope I am wrong, but my reason says I am dead on. The Democratic contingent of Congress spends its time watching the steady roll of fascism through America's Institutions, silent where you would expect outrage, because they are all too aware that if they speak out their own dirty laundry will be dragged out for examination. They watched the appointment of federal judges carefully steered through the process of ratification through the system who had been solicited by the Federalist Society. Founded in 1982 by Republicans and Libertarians that organization had an agenda that includes lofty rhetoric that states:
"[T]hat the state exists to preserve freedom, that the separation of governmental powers is central to our Constitution, and that it is emphatically the province and duty of the judiciary to say what the law is, not what it should be."
That is what they say. One wonders if they ever read it. This is one of those times when rhetoric us used as cover, I suppose. The actions of the Federalists included placing judges with a political agenda who do as they are told. Clarence Thomas was their shining moment and the destruction of Anita Hill business as usual. Time and several thorough books have determined the truth of those questions.
I think it likely that Democrats serving in Congress cringe at the idea of an investigation into matters they know will not stand the light of day in a court overseen by one of these Federalist graduates. The meaning of 'is' does not even come close to not being able to see the difference between the separation of the branches of government and the monolithic state that confronts our eyes today. Remember the downcast eyes of Teddy Kennedy during the Clarence Thomas hearings. There is a reason that Democrats are afraid to speak out.
Democrats are vulnerable and they know it. Some of them probably wonder what the NSA picked up in its tapings or what kind of home movies Bush gets from his operatives and if they played starring roles. Not all of them have that kind of worries; I am sure there are good, decent, honest Congressmen on both sides of the isle. But there are enough to make it impossible for any counter move to be successful. Enough is all the NeoCons needed.
If an individual Congressman has dirty laundry he is vulnerable. He can be depended on to be quiet on those issues that really matter and the censure and impeachment matter. If this Congress fails we will lose more than the illusion that the Democratic Party is at least marginally competent as a tool of political action. I used to believe that there was a vast Left-Wing conspiracy! Ha!
Impeachment matters; removing this administration is essential if America is to reclaim the vision that summoned it into being, if it is to again be the means by which a people govern themselves.
No president has ever violated the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and the other tenets of American thought as thoroughly as the weedeating wonder who occupies the White House today.
Any Democrat who asked to be re-elected to Congress without having signed on to the Censure by Conyers, promised to work for it, and then put his or her name to a bill of impeachment is a traitor to freedom and to America. I am a Republican and I am telling you the truth. I wish those in my own party would step up to the plate, but I do not expect it.
Our lives and the future of our country depend on taking action. Now.
In 1776 a group of men, supported by their wives who would also suffer, pledged, "Their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor," on a venture that looked impossible. The world expected us to fail; instead we won the Revolution and then lost the battle for freedom with the Great Compromise that ignored the inherent rights of blacks and women.
I suspect that the Founders know that now and hope that we will do better.
The Founders were mostly well off or at least middle class. Life and doing the right thing is about risk and they understood what they could lose. Life is temporary, honor is forever. They were imperfect and so are we. They had the courage to do what had to be done. Do we?
If the Democratic Delegation to Congress is afraid they should remember that the Constitution and Bill of Rights is precisely what they are sworn to protect. If doing that means they risk having their sins exposed to public sight then they should remember that the only two people who matter already know; they themselves and God.
Speak out, act, risk what is only yours on trust anyway. Are Democrats up to that challenge? The courage must come, as always, from individuals. For a moment imagine what might be possible. What if those who are controlled by guilty secrets came forward and simply admitted what has been hidden? What if they offered to make amends for any wrongs they have done? Confessed to those they had harmed? Asked forgiveness?
That would be a powerful statement that would leave them feeling better about themselves and on a firmer footing with everyone around them - and with God. Their fellow members could support and encourage them. Many would find that much would be forgiven them. It would be a revival of American trust, something much needed by all of us today.
America, needs clean, open, politics and the means for ensuring that the government we pay for does not become the government that owns us. Impeachment is necessary. I suggest that the Democrats in Congress get off their duffs and get started. Forget your favorite entree in the Congressional Dining room; forget that plush retirement; forget the junkets and perks. Your country needs you NOW. Time is short and should not be wasted.
A Republican woman told you so."