It is starting.
I can feel it.
I think the SOTU last night was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.
Without any prominent Democratic members of Congress uttering the word, there is a wave coming."
Most Republicans are disturbed by the crisis into which their party has been dragged . . .
Conservatives . . . have been especially troubled.
Now to be fair, I only reproduced part of the text above. It came from the May 28, 1973 edition of Time Magazine's interview with Barry Goldwater and read:
Most Republicans are disturbed by the crisis into which their party has been dragged by the Watergate scandal.
Conservatives, despite their general support of Richard Nixon, have been especially troubled.
If you substitute "Bush" for "Nixon" and "Iraq" for "Watergate", you get Deja Vu' all over again.
When asked if he thought Nixon should resign, Goldwater said
If the President of the United States lied to the American people, then the question is: Can you trust him? Impeachment would come up. And this country is in too much trouble internationally to have such a gigantic demonstration of distrust in its leaders.
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If it can be proved that he lied, resignation would have to be considered.
It would be quick. Everything would be over, ended. It wouldn't drag out like impeachment.
One key difference though is that Agnew was still in office when this interview took place.
(In the interview Goldwater indicated he didn't think Agnew would have to resign because he didn't "know what the hell is going on at the White House" and so he wasn't involved in the coverup.)
Bye Bye Cheney Bye Bye
I predict it will happen with the same cadence as Agnew.
He knows it too. Look at that CNN interview today. He was mad as a hatter. Crazy as a Loon.
5 months after that interview with Goldwater, Time published an article titled "The Fall of Spiro Agnew"
After the long weeks of buildup, of insisting upon his innocence, of accusing Government officials of plotting his downfall, of vowing that he would fight to the end, the denouement of the Spiro Agnew debacle came with stunning swiftness.
. . . Agnew walked into a Baltimore courtroom last week and admitted that he had falsified his income tax in 1967. When he emerged half an hour later, Agnew had been transformed from Vice President of the United States into a convicted felon.
If we break down that first paragraph it should sounds like Cheney today on CNN.
There have certainly been "long weeks of buildup". After all, "Mission Accomplished" was announced May 1, 2003 -- nearly 4 years ago.
Cheney is insisting upon his innocence:
BLITZER: The criticism is that you took your eye off the ball by going into Iraq and, in effect reducing the focus of attention on al Qaeda and bin Laden.
CHENEY: It's just not true. I've heard that charge -- it's simply not true, Wolf. The fact of the matter is, we can do more than one thing at a time and we have. We've been very successful with going after al Qaeda. They're still out there, they're still a formidable force. But they're not nearly as formidable as they once were, in terms of numbers and so forth.
Agnew blamed the government. Cheney blames the Press.
And of course, "vowing that he would fight to the end" --
CHENEY: Implicit in what the critics are suggesting, I think, is an obligation of saying, well, here's what we need to do, or, We're not going to do anything else, we're going to accept defeat.
Defeat is not an answer. We can, in fact, prevail here and we need to prevail. And the consequences of not doing so are enormous.
Now with his little pal Scooter dropping some timebombs during his trial, I predict Cheney will resign (though he may still say it is for health reasons) by April 1st. That way he will have more time to go hunting and shoot some more of his friends.
Georgie Porgie -- Who Will Tell Him It Is Time To Run Away?
Georgie Porgie, puddin' and pie,
Kissed the girls and made them cry.
When the boys came out to play,
Georgie Porgie ran away.
I predict that Bush will be forced to resign by the end of this year.
Under the solemn oak trees of Camp David, a profoundly troubled man spent much of the weekend walking on quiet paths, looking out over the Catoctin Mountains, and thinking about what to say to a disturbed nation. Observed an aide: "I don't know what he's going to say, or how he is going to say it, soft or hard, pleadingly or abrasively."
The quote above is from a Time Magazine article dated August 20, 1973. A little less than a year before Nixon resigned. It sounds a lot like the weekend Bush spent up there when he was interviewed by 60 minutes.
Two months later came the Saturday night massacre where Nixon ordered that Archibald Cox, the Watergate Special Prosecutor, be fired. He couldn't get his Attorney General Elliot L. Richardson or his Deputy Attorney General William D. Ruckelshaus, to fire Cox, so Nixon fired them.
The week was propelled through its course by public protest against the President unprecedented in its intensity and breadth. Individual Americans demanded Richard Nixon's resignation or impeachment in 275,000 telegrams that overloaded Western Union circuits in Washington. Much of the legal profession, most of organized labor and many key religious leaders joined the assault. Nearly two dozen resolutions to at least begin impeachment proceedings were introduced in the House of Representatives. At the shocked White House, even the President's loyal chief of staff, Alexander Haig, termed the conflagration "a fire storm."
But Nixon dragged on until he finally resigned on August 9, 1974.
People Are Angry, but Bush & Cheney are Revolting
You can look back at a previous diary I wrote on November 18th where I was arguing that I didn't want to hear Senator Reid or Speaker Pelosi or other prominent Democrats talking about impeachment.
My concern was that it would look petty and vengeful and people would regret voting Democratic. I wanted to see the Democrats have their hearings, release the findings (though I thought it would be good to do so in a coordinated manner between all the committees so that every day or so there would be more bad news for BushCo.)
But without a word from Senator Reid or Speaker Pelosi, the impeachment movement is coming. And it is going to come from the grassroots up.
Average, non-political people are expressing dismay at a President who says he knows the majority of Americans and Congress are against him, but he is going to "stay the course".
Bush is trying to sell a war but nobody is buying it.
The public has now gone from thinking the war in Iraq was a mistake to thinking that Bush is a mistake.
Break out the Bread. This Administration is toast.