They went after him for being Bill Clinton. The “perjury” allegation was just the best excuse they could come up with.
We already tried that this thread. Here, have my lance.
Bumper sticker I’ve seen: “I don’t care if he’s dead, I still want to IMPEACH NIXON!”
Pretending that Clinton’s impeachment was rooted in any sort of honest concern about “perjury” is just as disingenuous now as it was then. The whole thing was never anything but a plan C trap devised after years of investigation had failed utterly to turn up anything else. It was painfully transparent then and it still is. No passage of time will ever legitimize or dignify it.
Well, technically, it was an investigation about a real estate deal. A partisan SP went on a fishing expidition.
As much as I think G.W. Bush is an idiot and an incompetent, I don’t buy the alcoholic brain damage argument. Look at the off-the-cuff remarks of his father. Incoherence runs in the family.
Sometimes a nut is simply a nut.
The Center for Constitutional Rights published a work outlining the justifications for impeachment and can be found here.
Care to explain to me why Bill Clinton was forced to testify under oath about a personal relationship, while GWB has not once testified under oath about his decision to start a war under false pretenses?
Can we PLEASE ad a collorary to Godwin that states you automatically lose an argument if you counter a Bush discussion by bringing up Bill Clinton?
Actually, the prices first went through the roof after Memorial Day (Late May) 2000. I just bought a new truck and paid 1.98 per gallon on a road trip. We had been paying far less than that before.
I found a receipt from 3/2002 where gas had gone back down to $1.32. Not sure where you were going with this assertion, but think again.
What did he lie about?
Oh, yeah, the blowjob. The blowjob. That’s right, it was a blowjob.
'Twould be nice. But look for this thread to become a template for national debate if the Dems win control of the House in 2006. The reason you haven’t heard much in the press about Bush’s perfidy is that the Dems have no power to drive the debate, having no power and all. But if they win the House, they will be able to start investigations. Investigations with subpoena power. Then you’ll hear Pubbie supporters howling that it’s all cheap political tricks. And THEN you’ll hear comparisons between the current investigations of the Bush administration for war crimes, treason, profiteering and such and the Clinton impeachment over a blowjob. And the Pubbies will respond “it was about perjury.” And once again, no one will believe them.
Can’t do that. Too many posters would never have anything to say in any political threads.
-Joe
To answer the OP’s question, though, there is a strong tendency among Americans to regard impeachment as a last-resort policy, to be undertaken when there is no alternative whatsoever. Mr. Nixon’s impeachment was well underway when he resigned, and I think there is common consent that he should have been impeached, tried, and removed from office. Messrs. Johnson and Clinton, the majority view seems to hold, were impeached for purely political reasons by Republican-Party House of Representatives leaderships that appear to many to have been arrogant and overreaching in both cases.
Compare dethroning a monarch in the U.K. There’s historical precedent, from 1327, 1649-51, and 1688. But it’s lunatic-fringe material to suggest it be done today (as distinguished from the sane minority which advocates replacement of the monarchy with a republic; I’m talking about the “impeach Liz and substitute Wills” nuts).
In short, Mr. Bush’s policies are disliked by a great deal of Americans, arguably violative of constitutional rights, and otherwise execrable to many. But they do not rise to the level of “impeachable offenses” in the eyes of many Americans, including some strongly opposed to Mr. Bush – he was re-elected for a four-year term, and in the absence of actions truly destructive to the American tradition of representative government, he has the “right” to serve out that term, however much we may dislike his policies.
This is exactly right…“casually” impeaching a president undermines the democratic process, and could cause chaos to the system. We have an election every 4 years to give the people an opportunity to get a new person in there, and we even have a law now that no one can be President for more than 2 terms, just to avoid being stuck with a bad apple for too long (which some people actually believe is in itself contrary to the democratic process). So, as disliked at W is by some, impeachment is not necessarily the way to solve the problem.
“Godwin” doesn’t say that at all. What Godwin sez is that you lose if you compare a fellow Poster to Hitler. Not just bring up his name.
Besides which, impeaching Bush would be futile. You impeach an individual, not his entire administration, and if Bush were removed from office, Dick Cheney would be president.
“Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”
That’s true, too. I am not one of the “hate W” people, but I venture to say that if people put the entire administration into a hierarchy, with most hated at the top, W would be at least 1/2 way down the list. 
Actually, Godwin’s Law says, “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin’s_law
Sure, but silencing those folks would have the result of raising the intellectual level of most discussions by at least 15%. 