GOP's McCarthy argues against first-term presidential impeachments

[babylonsister]

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/gops-mccarthy-argues-against-first-term-presidential-impeachments

GOP’s McCarthy argues against first-term presidential impeachments
12/09/19 02:53 PM
By Steve Benen

snip//

In November, the House GOP leader endorsed the Kremlin’s discredited conspiracy theory about Ukraine interfering in U.S. elections, and last week, he misquoted Alexander Hamilton. All of which helped pave the way for today’s latest gem.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) doesn’t quite have his impeachment facts straight.

“In modern history, we’ve never gone after impeaching a president in the first term,” McCarthy said in a Monday appearance on Fox News ahead of the House Judiciary Committee’s second public impeachment hearing.

I guess the motivation behind rhetoric like this is that if the Democratic impeachment effort can be characterized as unprecedented, then it would be … bad. The trouble is, there’s an important difference between historical curiosities and actual arguments.

Before Trump, there have been three impeachment efforts: Andrew Johnson in 1868, Richard Nixon in 1974, and Bill Clinton in 1998. Johnson was impeached in his first (and only) term; Nixon resigned before being impeached; and Clinton was impeached in his second term.

For Kevin McCarthy, this is significant because, well, I actually haven’t the foggiest idea why. What matters to the process is the seriousness of presidential misdeeds, not what year in a president’s tenure they occurred.

There’s never been an impeachment process involving a president with a one-syllable name, either, but that’s not exactly a point that advances the conversation in a constructive way.

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) joked in response to McCarthy’s comments, “Foiled. How did we forget about the ‘Presidential Right to First-Term Crime Spree’ clause of the Constitution?”

[Raven123]

1. Necessity is the mother of invention

[gratuitous]

2. What's next, you can't impeach a president during a month with an "R" in it?

These legal beagles in the Republican party are just too much, aren't they? They'll cut corners and make up shit as suits them ("A president can't name a Supreme Court Justice during the last year of his term" ), but even when Democrats are following the black letter of the law or the Constitution, they come up with all manner of nonsense rules that don't exist anywhere but their own defective brains.

[babylonsister]

3. Newt claimed it's a travesty during the holiday season.

Yet he did exactly the same thing with Clinton. None of them are to be trusted.

[Submariner]

4. a "first-term impeachment" just weeks before Xmas...what's the world coming to?

Gingrich must be in tears.