Laying the groundwork

A great piece at Opinion Journal this morning, discussing the bigger picture behind the Feingold nonsense. The WSJ stands convinced that should Democrats find a way to win back one or both houses of Congress, impeachment is coming for the President.

The real debate in Democratic circles would be whether to pass articles of impeachment. Whether such an inevitable attempt succeeds would depend on Mr. Bush's approval rating, and especially on whether Democrats could use their subpoena power as committee chairs to conjure up something they could flog to a receptive media as an "impeachable" offense. But everyone should understand that censure and impeachment are important--and so far the only--parts of the left's agenda for the next Congress.

The key to the whole matter is the politics, not the facts: When the fever gets this hot in supposedly mainstream forums, Mr. Feingold is right to conclude that the facts behind any censure or impeachment motion won't really matter. All that will count is the politics, which means it will come down to a question of votes in Congress. And several leading Democrats have already raised the "impeachment" card.

California Senator Barbara Boxer loudly wrote four legal scholars late last year asking if the NSA wiretaps were impeachable. John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, has introduced a resolution calling for the creation of a "select committee to investigate the administration's intent to go to war before congressional authorization, manipulation of pre-war intelligence, encouraging and countenancing torture, retaliating against critics, and to make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment."

In other words, everything that Mr. Bush has been accused of during the last five years, no matter how Orwellian or thoroughly refuted, will be trotted out again and used as impeachment fodder.

I would join with the WSJ in thanking Mr. Feingold for laying it all out on the table. I understand that people don't like the president. I understand that there are substantive and deep disagreements over his policies.

What I don't understand is how it leads them to this kind of idiocy.