Discover GOP Opprobrium

[teapeebubbles]

I know it’s not going to happen, and I know it doesn’t have the votes to pass, but it’s nevertheless striking to hear a Republican lawmaker use the “I” word in reference to the president. (via TP)

“The president says, ‘I don’t care.’ He’s not accountable anymore,” [Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.)] says, measuring his words by the syllable and his syllables almost by the letter. “He’s not accountable anymore, which isn’t totally true. You can impeach him, and before this is over, you might see calls for his impeachment. I don’t know. It depends how this goes.”

The conversation beaches itself for a moment on that word — impeachment — spoken by a conservative Republican from a safe Senate seat in a reddish state. It’s barely even whispered among the serious set in Washington, and it rings like a gong in the middle of the sentence, even though it flowed quite naturally out of the conversation he was having about how everybody had abandoned their responsibility to the country, and now there was a war going bad because of it.

You’ll notice, of course, that Hagel wasn’t actually advocating impeachment, and didn’t even say he’d vote to throw Bush out of office, if it ever came to that.

But it’s striking to hear the word, isn’t it?