ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES
Enter
except for that nagging little detail
that you actually have to have —
you know ... a reason to impeach,
beyond “I think it would be fun.”
Will a reason develop? Well,
you know, Sen. Tom Coburn (ROkla.) is really worried that the
Obama administration is getting
“perilously close” to the standard
for impeachment, saying at a town
hall meeting at Muskogee, Okla.,
“I think there’s some intended
violation of the law in this administration, but I also think there’s
a ton of incompetence of people
who are making decisions.”
Now, Coburn’s concerns are
filtered through the fact that he
and President Obama have, over
the course of their careers, become oddball BFFs — indeed, half
of the reason anyone pays attention to what Coburn says is due to
the fact that he and the president
have this weird relationship. (And
the thing is ... I trust this completely! I absolutely believe that
this is how these two guys, with
their under-appreciated mordant
streaks, demonstrate their affection for one another.)
Coburn went on to say, “Thank
goodness it doesn’t have to happen
in the Senate until they’ve brought
charges in the House.” But the lin-
LOOKING FORWARD
IN ANGST
gering question of course, is whether or not such “charges” need to
have actual merit behind them for
them to be brought. Reading between the lines of those musing on
the possibility of impeaching the
president, you get the strong sense
that the precipitating event won’t
be a scandal, it will simply be the
GOP achieving a Senate majority.
From there, it becomes an exercise
of throwing stuff at the wall in the
search for something that sticks.
And maybe not even that. As
Jonathan Chait points out, “Still, it
is noteworthy how many conservatives take the basic moral logic of
Obama’s impeachment for granted.” That goes for the
legal logic as well.
HUFFINGTON
09.01-08.13
Sen. Tom
Coburn
(R-Okla.) thinks
the Obama
administration
is approaching
the standard for
impeachment,
but he also
blames
“a ton of
incompetence
of people who
are making
decisions.”