Senator John Kerry said last night that, if the Democrats retake the House in the 2006 midterm elections, they should impeach President Bush.
Kerry Links Retaking House To Bush Impeachment (Hotline On Call)
MA. Sen. John Kerry said last night that if Dems retake the House, there’s a “solid case” to bring “articles of impeachment” against President Bush for allegedly misleading the country about pre-war intelligence, according to several Dems who attended. Kerry was speaking at a holiday party for alumni of his WH ’04 bid.
About 100 campaign vets gathered at Finn McCool’s bar in D.C. to hear him. In a short speech, Kerry praised Dems who were working on Senate and House campaigns, and then said, according to one listener: “If we take back the House, there’s a solid case to bring articles of impeachment against this president.” Another listener heard a slight variation: “If we win back the House, I think we have a pretty solid case to bring articles of impeachment against this President.” Kerry then quickly added, according to several in the audience, “Don’t tell anyone I said that.”
A Kerry spokesman, David Wade, put it off as a joke:
Is it really a story that, with a smile on his face and to ensuing laughter, at a Christmas party for his hardest working troops who are still working to win in 2006, a Democrat joked about why these diehard Democrats needed to keep dreaming of a Democratic Congress? Impeachment jokes in Washington are as old as Don Rumsfeld and as funny as Dick Cheney is gruff. Only the truly humorless would say bah humbug to the rarest of partisan red meat.
Of course, that was Trent Lott’s defense, too.
I believed Lott and tend to believe Kerry/Wade, too. Saying stupid things in an attempt to be funny shouldn’t be a career ender.* Still, this was pretty stupid.
The RNC is calling the statement “outragous” and engaging in some bluster about the issue:
RNC Communications Director Brian Jones responded to Senator John Kerry̢۪s call for presidential impeachment with the following statement.
“With his impeachment advocacy last night, John Kerry once again showed how out of touch he is with American people and how in step he is with the far left fringes of the Democrat party. For one of the leaders of the Democrat party to begin a push for presidential impeachment, in seriousness or jest, on the eve of the Iraq elections is both foolish and shortsighted.â€
Sadly, Jones is not joking.
*I did think Lott should have been removed as Majority Leader for his poor judgment, especially given the number of other blunders he made in that capacity. Had he just been a rank-and-file Senator, though, I would have thought the whole controversy silly. He was rather clearly just buttering up an old coot on his birthday, not seriously suggesting that we’d have been better off in a segregated society. Which, ironically, we had for nearly two more decades even though Truman won the election.
