California Conservative

In a stunning development, House Republicans forced a vote on Dennis Kucinich’s privileged resolution calling for Dick Cheney’s impeachment. Reluctantly, liberal Democrats voted, by 218-194 margin, to send the resolution to the House Judiciary Committee. Follow this link to see how your representative voted.

This is the Democrats’ worst nightmare. With this vote, the Nutter base of the Democratic Party will demand action. In fact, they’ll demand the House Judiciary Committee to pass articles of impeachment against Cheney. This will be the lead story the rest of this week. This isn’t likely to go away anytime soon, with the distinct possibility of it rambling on after the parties’ nominees are picked.

Here in Minnesota, Reps. Ellison, Peterson and Walz voted for sending this to the House Judiciary Committee. I suspect that that vote will make Tim Walz’s re-election campaign a very bumpy affair. He ran as a independent voice. He’s voted like Nancy Pelosi’s puppet.

Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich expressed satisfaction Tuesday with a series of procedural twists on the House floor that resulted in the Ohio congressman’s impeachment articles against Vice President Dick Cheney being sent for committee review.

A series of strategic maneuvers on both sides of the partisan aisle ended with a 218-194 vote along party lines to deliver the impeachment resolution to the House Judiciary Committee, the panel of jurisdiction for such matters.

The information in those paragraphs should scare the daylights out of Ms. Pelosi. Unfortunately for Ms. Pelosi, that isn’t the worst news. This is:

Kucinich savored the victory, saying that Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers had reassured him and backers of the resolution “that he would in fact launch an impeachment inquiry.” But Conyers told FOX News that he would announce his decision on Wednesday after speaking with House Democratic leaders.

Anytime that Dennis Kucinich and John Conyers are the public face of the Democratic Party, it’s a bad day for Democrats. What’s worse is that this puts Ms. Pelosi in an awful place between the DailyKos/MoveOn.org bunch and moderates. If she orders Rep. Conyers not to pursue impeachment, she’ll alienate the Nutroots, thereby drying up their campaign contributions. If she supports impeachment hearings, she’ll imperil every moderate, regardless of whether they voted for impeachment hearings or not.

Ms. Pelosi’s ‘bodyguards’ are already surfacing:

High-ranking Democratic Rep. Alcee Hastings, who was himself impeached while a judge in Florida, said he was not happy with Kucinich’s attempts to raise the matter on the floor in an attempt to circumvent the normal legislative process. Kucinich “is on a quest of his own. He sees flying saucers and he acts like one,” Hastings said.

Ms. Pelosi’s spokesman is upset about the Republicans’ maneuvering:

“Pelosi spokesman Nadeam Elshami called the two-hour debate “absurd.”

It would have been one 20 minute vote to dispose of the motion, but instead Republicans switched their votes and forced the House to take two additional votes. They wasted the American peoples time and, honestly, these comments from the White House are just laughable,” Elshami said.

What’s laughable is Pelosi’s spokesman talking about Republicans wasting the House’s time. What’s laughable is Pelosi’s spokesman ignoring the fact that the vast majority of the Democratic Party wouldn’t take Pelosi’s no for an answer.

Pelosi tried burying Kucinich’s privileged resolution but the Out of Iraq Caucus wouldn’t accept Pelosi’s edict. Tonight’s vote essentially says that Ms. Pelosi isn’t the House’s leader. She’s simply a powerless figurehead. Don’t think that the Democratic caucus didn’t notice.

Vice President Cheney’s office, along with the White House, criticized the House leadership:

Conversely, Cheney’s office and the White House blasted Democrats for bringing up the issue at all.

“It is one thing for Congressman Kucinich to use this political ploy in his presidential campaign. It is another thing to do so on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. The Democrat-led Congress still has not sent the president a single appropriations bill. It’s time to do so, our troops are waiting,” Cheney spokeswoman Megan Mitchell said.

“This Congress has not sent a single appropriations bill to the presidents desk this year … yet, they find time to spend an entire work period on futile votes to impeach the vice president or to pass contempt citations against the president’s chief of staff and former counsel,” said White House press secretary Dana Perino, referring to House efforts to issue citations to former White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former counsel Harriet Miers for failing to respond to subpoenas.

“It is this behavior that leaves the American people shaking their head in wonder at this Congress,” Perino said.

I think it’s time to ask a new set of questions during a poll. Here’s how I’d word the questions:

1. The Democrats formally took control of the House and Senate in January, 2007. Since that time, they haven’t sent President any of the 13 appropriations bills funding the government for FY 2008. Based on this information, has the Democratic leadership spent their time productively?
2. Has the Democrats’ legislative agenda improved your life?
3. Other than increasing the minimum wage, what is the Democrats’ greatest achievement?

These questions can’t help but tell voters that this congress (a) hasn’t gotten anything done, (b) hasn’t put a priority on getting the people’s business done, (c) hasn’t improved anyone’s life and (d) have held an endless string of ‘oversight hearings/partisan fishing expeditions.

What’s stunning to me is that Collin Peterson voted for impeaching Vice President Cheney. Rep. Peterson has tried maintaining an image of a moderate. He’s a charter member of the Blue Dog Democrats. Tonight, that facade was ripped away. Tonight, Collin Peterson showed himself to be out of touch with his constituents.

When I told Leo that Peterson had voted for sending Kucinich’s motion to the Judiciary Committee, there was stunned silence on both ends of the line for almost a minute. Leo said that he wasn’t surprised by Ellison and Walz voting that way but that he was surprised to hear about Peterson’s vote. I said that I wholeheartedly agreed with him.

Today’s vote has put Pelosi’s speakership in danger. It’s clear that the American people aren’t calling for Cheney’s impeachment. Kucinich hasn’t noticed that only the Nutroots are calling for Cheney’s impeachment. By forcing this vote, Kucinich has forced Democrats to take the 25 side of a 75-25 issue. That’s definitely not where Ms. Pelosi wants to be.

That’ll frequently happen if you align yourselves with fringe bombthrower. That’s exactly what Pelosi did. Don’t be surprised if, next November, she’ll pay the price for her association with her speakership.

Technorati Tags: Dennis Kucinich, Pelosi, Impeachment, Keith Ellison, Tim Walz, Collin Peterson, Blue Dog Democrat, John Conyers, Judiciary Committee, Election 2008

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 at 10:10 pm and is filed under Activism, Author: Gary Gross, Corruption, Domestic Policies, Election 2008, Investigations, Judiciary, Liberals, Pelosi, Special Interests, Subversives, W, Washington, DC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.