海角大神

As I noted Tuesday, Republicans have taken the position that the current ongoing talk of the impeachment of President Obama is nothing more than a Democratic fundraising ploy in advance of the midterm elections. While it is true, as FiveThirtyEight points out Wednesday, that Democrats are currently talking about the issue more than Republicans, a little bit of research reveals the following:

• As early as 2011, Congressman Michael Burgess (R) of Texas was quoted as saying that聽the GOP should use impeachment to stop the president from 鈥減ushing his agenda.鈥�
• More recently, in May 2013, Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R) was聽unwilling to take impeachment off the table as an option.
• In August, Rep. Blake Farenthold (R) of Texas expressed disappointment that Congress had not pursued the issue of Mr. Obama鈥檚 birth certificate, and said that聽there probably already were enough votes in the House to impeach the president.
• That same month, Rep. Kerry Bentivolio (R) of Michigan said聽that it would be 鈥渁 dream come true鈥� to impeach the president.
• Also in August of last year, Tom Coburn (R) of Oklahoma, normally a voice of reason in the Senate, said that聽the president was getting perilously close鈥� to grounds for impeachment.
• In September, Sen. John McCain (R) of Arizona, who had spent the better part of two years calling on the president to be more assertive in connection with the civil war in Syria, said that聽Obama would risk impeachment if he put "boots on the ground" in Syria without congressional approval.
• In October, both Rep. Michele Bachmann (R) of Minnesota and聽Louie Gohmert (R) of Texas raised the specter of impeachment.
• In November, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (R) told Newsmax radio host Steve Malzburg that聽the House and Senate should 鈥渞ender judgment鈥� against Obama,聽specifically mentioning impeachment;
• In January of this year, Texas Republican Rep. Steve Stockman, who was then in the middle of a quixotic primary campaign against Sen. John Cornyn, said that聽he was considering filing articles of impeachment against the president.
• In February, Georgia Republican Rep. Paul Broun said that he would support the president鈥檚 impeachment.
• Just a few weeks ago, Sen. Ron Johnson (R) of Wisconsin said that Obama had 鈥済one beyond鈥� the actions that nearly led to President Nixon鈥檚 impeachment聽before his resignation nearly 40 years ago.
• Finally, of course, there is Sarah Palin聽who recently聽doubled down on her call for the president鈥檚 impeachment in an interview with conservative radio host Michael Medved.

Slate鈥檚聽David Weigel goes further:

One could dismiss many of the calls for impeachment that I list above as political rhetoric from Republicans who were pandering to the base of the party, although it isn鈥檛 hard to believe that people like Representatives Bachmann, Gohmert, Stockman, Broun, and Farenthold were actually serious when they brought up the topic. As I said Tuesday, I think we can take the comments from people like Speaker John Boehner and others who are dismissing the idea of impeachment as a serious idea at face value. They know it鈥檚 a politically dumb idea that would do far more harm to the Republican Party than it would to the president. But they also knew a year ago that going down the government shutdown route was a politically dumb idea that would harm the Republican Party and, yet, they still went down that route when they found that the base of their own party had backed them into a corner. What will they do if they鈥檙e faced with a similar situation when it comes to impeachment? Perhaps we鈥檒l see some profiles in courage at that point, but past history suggests otherwise..

As far as the current debate over who started the impeachment meme, though, the answer to that question is fairly obvious, no matter how much Republicans may want to deny it.

Doug Mataconis appears on the Outside the Beltway blog at http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/.