Rep. Jason Chaffetz, among others, has suggested that President Obama could be facing impeachment sometime before the end of his second term. Here’s why this is a bad idea for Republicans.
The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake says, while much of the GOP base would love to see Obama impeached, moving forward for Congressional Republicans could do more harm than good for the party.
He points out there are three big risks for the GOP if they move toward impeachment, most notably it could damage the party’s prospects in what already looks like a good election year.
The name of the game for the GOP right now is maintaining their edge and trying to win back the Senate. Everything else is noise.
Secondly, it lends credence to Democrats’ argument that Republicans are controlled by the extreme wing of their party. And to the extent that Democrats can make the 2014 election a referendum on the GOP’s conduct in Congress (see: government shutdown), it’s to their benefit.
Lastly, impeachment is a very difficult issue to press. Even in the late 1990s, when an American president had an affair in the White House and then lied about it, support for impeachment was still well shy of a majority — as low as 30 percent.
