Reply #50: I'll make this very plain: [View All]

I'm not interested in impeachment unless we can convict. My every opinion on the issue of impeachment hinges on that.

Some of you seem to think that, if we can only get those articles of impeachment through the House, everything will change. Suddenly, sixteen Republicans in the Senate -- assuming that every Democrat is in favor of conviction -- will say, "You know what? Bush doesn't deserve to be in office" and vote in favor of conviction.

We could likely pull off impeachment in the House without a single Republican vote. But conviction in the Senate rests entirely on the votes of Republicans -- Republicans who have slavishly supported this President ever since he came into office. If Republicans haven't been uncomfortable with Bush's lies and rank incompetence yet, what is going to change their minds now?

Even if you can convict Bush, you're stuck with Cheney. Is the plan to impeach and remove him at the same time? Suppose, for a second, that you can get sixteen Republicans to vote to convict Bush. How many of those are going to vote to convict Cheney, knowing that Nancy Pelosi -- the Nancy Pelosi they've spent the better part of this year demonizing -- is going to be President? A Republican who would vote to make a Democrat president might as well start packing his bags.

I do not trust Senate Republicans to "do the right thing." They have stood by this President on wiretapping, on torture, on detainment, on illegal war... the list is a long one. To think that they will suddenly have a change of heart because a series of hearings tell them something they already know strikes me as the height of foolhardiness.