Bob Fertik: House Sends Impeachment to John Conyers

From Democrats.com via Bob Fertik's Blog:


By a bipartisan vote of 251-166, the full House of Representatives sent Dennis Kucinich's 35 Articles of Impeachment to the Judiciary Committee.

That means Chairman John Conyers now has the power to decide whether to hold impeachment hearings - or not.

Incredibly, 24 Republicans voted with 227 Democrats; the 166 no votes came exclusively from Republicans.

So what will Conyers do? After the Downing Street Memo was published on May 1, 2005, Democrats.com worked closely with Conyers to hold the famous basement hearings featuring Cindy Sheehan, Ray McGovern, and John Bonifaz. In August 2006, Conyers published all of the evidence of Bush's crimes in The Constitution in Crisis. Many of us believed he would begin impeachment proceedings if Democrats won the House, which they did that November.

But in the spring of 2006, Nancy Pelosi declared impeachment "off the table." And when Democrats took control and Conyers was sworn in as Judiciary Chairman, he fell firmly into line behind the Speaker. (Conyers insists Pelosi did not threaten to deny him the Chairmanship.)

Since 2005, Conyers has received millions of impeachment petitions. Hundreds if not thousands of activists have spoken to him personally. But he remains adamantly opposed to hearings, for one simple reason: he fears it will hurt the Democratic candidate for President (now Barack Obama) in November.

Of course there isn't one scintilla of evidence to support Conyers' fear. It is based entirely on the 1998 election, when Newt Gingrich turned the Starr Report (published online on September 9) into a campaign issue but lost a small number of seats by overplaying the issue in TV ads. Despite those small losses, Republicans held the majority and voted to impeach Clinton six weeks after the election, on December 19. And two years later, despite a massively unpopular impeachment, Republican George Bush got close enough to Al Gore to steal the election. And one reason it was close was that Democrats believed impeachment made Clinton too "toxic" to campaign even in Arkansas, which would have put Gore over the top in the Electoral College even without Florida.

And there is no comparison between impeaching Clinton for consensual and impeaching Bush for 35 High Crimes, including a disastrous war of aggression based on lies. And the difference is reflected in polls - only 26% of Americans wanted to impeach Clinton in 1998, while 43% of Americans wanted to impeach Bush in our last poll on July 8, 2007. (The Corporate Media adamantly refuses to ask about impeachment in their own polls. You can email all the pollsters here.)

So the election fear that has paralyzed Conyers and the Democrats isn't just baseless, it's idiotic. Bush's polls are now lower than Richard Nixon's ever were. The American people are sick of Bush and can't wait to get rid of him.

Here at Democrats.com, we will continue to do everything we can to persuade Conyers and every other House Democrat to support impeachment. To be effective, we need your support - emails, calls, and especially local organizing.

Now that Kucinich's Articles of Impeachment are before the House Judiciary Committee, the battle is just beginning. And Kucinich feels exactly the same way:

"Leadership wants to bury it, but this is one resolution that will be coming back from the ," Kucinich told Capitol Briefing. "Thirty days from now, if there is no action, I will be bringing the resolution up again, and I won't be the only one reading it."

Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) has not commented on whether he plans to hold hearings, and Kucinich said he would meet with Conyers this week to present him with documentation for his charges against Bush. But if there is no further action, Kucinich said, "We'll come back and many of us will be reading this [on the House floor], and we'll come back with 60 articles, not 35."

Amen!!!