TELL PELOSI: Bush impeachment polls as high as Nixon when he resigned

House Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers challenged impeachment activists to rebut his arguments against impeaching Bush.

One of his arguments against impeaching Bush is lack of public support.

However, with a near complete media blackout of the issue, the very first poll showed more support for impeaching Bush than there was for impeaching Clinton after eight years of 24/7 scandal-mongering, and only slightly less than there was for impeaching Nixon, THE DAY BEFORE HE RESIGNED.

So lack of public support is not an argument. Once proceedings start, it would likely dwarf support for impeaching Nixon as well.

Supporting docs

More on impeachment polls at AfterDowningStreet.org.

Send this to Conyers, Pelosi, & your Congress coward

Conyers:
johnconyersjr@gmail.com , john.conyers@mail.house.gov
Conyers phone: 202-225-5126 / Conyers fax: 202-225-0072

Pelosi:
DC Phone: 202-225-4965 DC Fax: 202-225-4188
sf.nancy@mail.house.gov

Speaker contact form: http://speaker.house.gov/contact

Find your congress coward:
http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/index.html

Why Bush impeachment doesn't make front page of LA Times, NY Times, or Washington Post

Yesterday, Dennis Kucinich introduced 35 articles of impeachment against President George W. Bush in the House of Representatives.

Click each image to see full front page:

He provided substantial evidence of criminal activity, evidence that included the president's own public statements that were prima facie confessions of criminal guilt, from admitting he ordered wiretaps and torture, admitting privately to ordering the outing of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame, to lying about the threat from Iraq and Iran in spite of overwhelming intelligence to the contrary, lying about available intelligence warning of the 9/11 attacks, to his forcing bureaucrats to lie about the cost of his Medicare drug bill and global warming, to the endemic cronyism from Iraq to Enron to Hurricane Katrina.

This did not merit front page coverage of the nation's top newspapers, the Washington Post, New York Times, or Los Angeles Times. The Washington Post had a small blurb on it their Washington news round up.


This all in spite of this being only the third time in American history a president was impeached, and the very first poll on impeaching Bush a few years back showed the same public support for it as there was for impeaching Nixon the day before he resigned and nearly double the peak support for impeaching Bill Clinton.

All of these papers equaly ignored Kucinich's articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney.

The newspapers do have one good excuse for not covering this: the Democratic leadership in Congress has said impeachment is "off the table," so Kucinich's resolution will likely go nowhere.

But that in itself is worthy of story. Nine years ago, we impeached a president for lying in a sexual harassment civil suit deposition. That could have prevented the plaintiff from getting a fair trial though the point is moot given that the judge threw out the case and Clinton had an ironclad alibi for his whereabouts at the time Paula Jones claimed the incident occurred.

By contrast, Bush's lies, imcompetence and corruption has cost the lives of thousands of our troops in an unnecessary war in Iraq, arguably thousands in a preventable terrorist attack, the lives of a million Iraqis and loss of much of the thin goodwill we enjoyed in the Middle East. It has also cost us our reputation as a model of respecting human rights and international law. And of course it has and will cost us trillions for his war, most of it going into the pockets of cronies who have a habit of doing poorly or not doing at all the no bid contracts we are given.

Apparently, Kucinich doesn't understand the difference between the seriousness of the offenses of Clinton and Bush.

Clinton's real offense was being competent and not completely subservient to the wishes of the wealthy and powerful (though he came close with NAFTA) compared to his Republican predecessor. Bush's offenses were merely against American taxpayers and voters, who matter only to the extent that they need to be snookered into ignoring government of, by, and for the wealthy, and against the powerless people of Iraq, who do not matter at all.

ANIMATION: Is support for impeaching Bush more like Cliniton or Nixon?

Click to see animated version

FULL-SIZED STILL
(suitable for mailing your corporate boot-licking, lobbyist wannabee, supposed representatives in DC)

More details on sources

Bush impeachment polls more like Nixon than Clinton

In March 2006, the Wall Street Journal found that public support for impeaching President Bush was nearly twice the peak support for impeaching President Clinton. This was in spite of eight years of 24/7 scandal mongering and impeachment talk and an actual impeachment trial in Clinton's case, and a virtual news blackout on the grassroots movement to impeach Bush.

This got me wondering--what did Nixon's impeachment poll numbers look like when he resigned rather than face impeachment?



I searched the net a couple of times and couldn't find the relevant stats, so I had to go into the LA Times archives. It turns out that a day before Nixon resigned, his poll numbers were not that different from Bush's: 55% of Americans wanted him removed, and 64% thought there should at least be an impeachment trial in the Senate.

SOURCE: click to see full-sized

The earliest polls I could find nine months before that showed LESS support for impeaching Nixon than Bush. One poll showed the public divided on impeachment and the other solidly opposed. This was a week and a half after the "Saturday Night Massacre" when Nixon fired Justice Department officials until he found someone willing to fire the special prosecutor investigating Watergate, so the public had some idea of his wrong-doing.

click to see full-sized articles:

So how is it one president was impeached when most of the public didn't think it was necessary, one president ran out of office when a solid majority thought he should be impeached, but a third president with a similar majority in favor of impeachment remains untouched?

For a while, you could blame the media and Congress equally. The public clearly saw the laws, treaties, our constitution, and basic human decency being violated, but the media turned a blind eye or excused it, and Congress either ignored the crimes or retro-actively made them legal. The Democrats at least had the fig-leaf that they were not in control of Congress to hide behind for their inaction.

Now they do not.

Nor can they say that the media is entirely subservient to Bush since even a corporate boot-lick like Chris Matthews feels free to criticize Bush.

Even if the media were still entirely hostile, they would be obliged to cover impeachment proceedings, and when the offenses of the Bush administration were cataloged and described without Karl Rove or Fox News' spin support for impeachment would likely grow even greater.

The real issue of course is not whether impeachment will succeed or fail, or how popular it is, but whether Congress will represent us, whether we have a real democracy or just enough of a semblance of one to lull us to sleep, whether our most basic laws apply to all people including the most powerful, and whether this country belongs to all the American people or just the few that can afford to buy the friendship of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

And apparently, the friendship of most of our Congress, Democrat as well as Republican, is bought and paid for as well--and not by us.

Impeachment: the next election vs. history

If impeachment proceedings are started, Republicans might be relieved and vote quickly to impeach for exactly the reason Pelosi is holding back: once Bush and Cheney are out of office, they will be out of mind, exactly the way Nixon and Agnew were after they resigned. 1976 between Carter and Ford was a squeaker when it should have been a landslide in the face of Nixon's crimes and foot-dragging on ending the Vietnam War. Nixon might have been in the minds of those who read and discussed politics, but not the broad masses of people.

Another unfortunately parallel is LBJ in 1968. Though he won in a landslide in 1964, Vietnam forced him to step aside in 1968. Since he was still in office election day, what people disliked about him wasn't an abstract memory but something as immediate as that night's evening news (back when it was still worth watching). Even though Humphrey moved to an anti-war position, Nixon not only wiped him out, but an even further right candidate, George Wallace, got a big chunk of the vote.

Both the Democrats and Republicans in Congress are older than me and remember these pieces of history.

While this analysis is accurate as far as determining the outcome of the next election, if it gives Bush and Cheney a pass on impeachment, the damage to our constitutional system may be permanent, and their sins will be swept under the carpet, and history rewritten that much more easily.

Most Americans are still only vaguely aware of the impeachable offenses of Bush and Cheney given the page A14 treatment they get in newspapers and near blackout on TV news. Those same outlets could elevate him to at least an average president over time if not the near deity status of Reagan.

By contrast, if he is impeached, fifty to a hundred years from now, Bush and Cheney will be members of a very small historical club that includes Clinton, Nixon, and Andrew Johnson. When grade school kids look at the list of charges against Bush and Cheney in their history books, they will wonder what all the fuss was about the other three, and when a future president takes more than half a step in the same anti-democratic, militarily aggressive direction, people will remember that grade school text and pull back on his leash hard.

Impeachment postcard to send Congress

Articles of Impeachment at ImpeachBush.org

Text of Kucinich's impeach Cheney bill H Res 333






impeach impeachment postcard president george w bush dick cheney iraq war wmd terrorism oil congress osama bin laden representative habeas corpushurricane katrina 9/11 september 11 9/11 commission venezuela haiti corruption occupation halliburton coup nancy pelosi john conyers professor smartass iraq petitionletter propaganda corporation fascism democracyhr 333 war on terror muslim dennis kucinich opinion public relations foreign policy al qaeda false flag cointelpro northwoods terrorist worst president ever failure war criminal 1976 election 1968 election karl rove lyndon b johnson abu ghraib torture torture memo nazi smartass comments resistance censored news rebel

Bush v. Clinton impeachment poll chart

From the Wall Street Journal :

Article that accompanies graphic

iraq war wmd terrorism oil bill clinton president george w bush impeachment graphic chart comparison poll corruption occupation halliburton colonialism white mans burden professor smartass democrat peak oil propaganda corporationfascism democracy political opinion war on terror muslim public opinion opinion worst president ever failure war criminal idiot retard closet gay karl rove puppet fascist chimp smartass comments resistance censored news rebel

ZOGBY POLL: 52% say impeach Bush for wiretaps (and past impeachment polls)

The question:

"If President Bush wiretapped American citizens without the approval of a judge, do you agree or disagree that Congress should consider holding him accountable through impeachment."

The answer:


The poll, commissioned by afterdowningstreet.org, mirrors the results of earlier polls by mainstream pollsters Zogby and IPSOS on whether Bush should be impeached if he lied about the reasons for going to war in Iraq.

Ironically, both polls show higher support for impeaching Bush without either party talking about it seriously than the peak of support for impeaching Clinton during the impeachment, which rarely broke 40% and the majority didn't even support hearings on Clinton's lying about sex.

http://www.pollingreport.com/scandal1.htm

Afterdowningstreet.org's links on their impeachment polls:

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/polling

The other element this story touches on is emerging evidence that Bush began this practice before 9/11, tearing away the other half of his figleaf for this, the first half being the lie that he needed to act fast to tap terrorists (American ones?) even though they have up to three days AFTER the tap is started to get the warrant.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011306Z.shtml

If the public wants something, the media ignores it, and Congress waits until the president admits to committing a crime (wiretapping) before investigating or exercising any oversight, what does that say about the quality of our democracy?

Whatever party your representatives are, you must hold their feet to the fire.

When people pay attention to politics and make noise, politicians wet their pants, which is why BOTH parties bend over backwards to be nice to old folks--they vote and notice when they get screwed (which is why Bush's prescription drug scam is going to hurt the GOP more than anything else).

KEY EXCERPTS:

Zogby Poll: Americans Support Impeaching Bush for Wiretapping
Submitted by Bob Fertik on January 13, 2006
For Release: January 16, 2006

By a margin of 52% to 43%, Americans want Congress to consider impeaching President Bush if he wiretapped American citizens without a judge's approval, according to a new poll commissioned by AfterDowningStreet.org, a grassroots coalition that supports a Congressional investigation of President Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003.

Recently White House spokesman Scott McClellan cited a Rasmussen poll that found 64% believe the NSA "should be allowed to intercept telephone conversations between terrorism suspects." Of course, that is exactly what Congress authorized when it created the FISA courts to issue special expedited secret warrants for terrorism suspects. But Bush defied the FISA law and authorized warrantless wiretaps of Americans, which has outraged Americans to the point that a majority believe Congress should consider Bush's impeachment.

"Bush admits he ordered illegal warantless wiretapping, but says it began in response to 9/11 and was limited to a small number of calls to or from Al Qaeda," Fertik said. "But recent reports suggest wiretapping affected a much larger number of Americans, and a report in Friday's Truthout says the wiretapping began before 9/11."

The Truthout article
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011306Z.shtml

FULL TEXT:

http://www.democrats.com/bush-impeachment-poll-2


wiretap eavesdrop warrant poll impeach afterdowningstreet.org zogby truthout president george w bush republican GOP conservative professor smartass lies political opinion war on terror public opinion opinion worst president ever failure war criminal idiot retard closet gaynazi smartass comments resistance censored news rebel

Impeachment polls: Bush vs. Clinton

The republicans and even most democrats think the American people are pretty damn stupid, and with proper marketing could be sold a hat full of shit.

This is one of those things that prove them wrong.

After all the hounding and media attention given to Bill Clinton's personal failings and the conservative drumbeat to impeach him, only 36% of Americans wanted him to be impeached. People were being herded toward supporting something stupid and petty, and they didn't buy it.

With virtually NO discussion of the issue in mainstream media and very little even from Democrats, 50% think Bush should be impeached if he lied about the causes for war, which the Downing Street Minutes and statements already on the record by former administration officials clearly prove.

The other great thing about this poll is that it was grassroots funded. Despite Bush's low job approval numbers, no mainstream polling organization was asking about impeachment, so Afterdowningstreet.org collected the money and commissioned one.


KEY EXCERPTS:

According to a poll by the Zogby organization, just released by the group Afterdowningstreet.org, 50 percent of the American public now would like to see the House impeach Bush if it were found that he had lied about the reasons for going to war in Iraq (if?).

Compare that to December 17, 1998, only days before Clinton's impeachment by the House of Representatives, when an AP poll found that only 36 percent of the American public wanted to see the president impeached.

Clearly Americans view the flawed invasion of Iraq and other actions by the Bush administration, like the placing of business cronies in high places, the bankrupting of the federal government, and the failure to come to the rescue of an American city as far more serious than Clinton's sex romp and the lying about it that followed. And there's plenty more bad news to come for Bush, beginning with likely indictments in the Plame outing affair.

FULL TEXT:

http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff10122005.html







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