Just over the last few days, we’ve seen prominent GOP voices talking up birth certificates and “death panels.” OK, congressional Republicans, anything else on your mind? Sure there is — Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Tex.) wants to talk about impeachment.
Even by the standards of the House GOP, this one’s a doozy.
“I think unfortunately the House is already out of the barn on this, on the whole birth certificate issue,” he said. “The original Congress, when his eligibility came up, should have looked into it and they didn’t. I’m not sure how we fix it.”
Farenthold posed his own hypothetical solution: “If we were to impeach the president tomorrow, you could probably get the votes in the House of Representatives to do it. But it would go to the Senate and he wouldn’t be convicted.”
Looking back a bit, a variety of voices on the right raised the specter of impeaching President Obama over all sorts of things — immigration policy, czars, recess appointments, DOMA, Benghazi, legislative gridlock, Syria, and job offers, among other things. In the spring, congressional Republicans went a little further, talking up the possibility of impeaching the president over executive orders that don’t exist, gun control, and even budget deficits.
But my favorite thing about Blake Farenthold is that he doesn’t bother coming up with a pretense for why he wants to impeach the president; he just seems to like the idea in general. Ordinarily, even the most ridiculous members of Congress try to come up with something to serve as grounds for impeachment, but Farenthold can’t be bothered — he supports impeachment; he thinks the House would vote for impeachment; and the Texas Republican is confident he knows what he’s talking about because grumble, birth certificate, grumble. Hey, Reince, how’s that Republican rebranding campaign going?
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