I am a longtime lurker from Washington State, where we are very much looking forward to making Dino Rossi a three time loser.
This is my first diary so please be gentle with me:-)
The Republican Party will attempt to impeach the President of The United States. Plain and simple, that must be our mantra.
As others have pointed out, the GOP is hellbent on repeating what they did in the 90s, only this time they think they can succeed. This just doesn't mean a government shutdown, but a witch hunt and Clinton style impeachment attempt on Obama. We need the public to know this. We must repeatedly tell them that a vote for The Republican Party, a third party vote, or just not voting at all, will set forth a partisan witch hunt and NOTHING will be accomplished to help the people of our country. While there is no way they can succeed in removing him from office, that doesn't mean they will not attempt it and rip our nation apart in the process.
Recently Lanny Davis appeared on Ed Schulz's radio program. While I am no fan of Mr. Davis, he did make a very pertinent point. If The GOP has control of The House, they will have subpoena power. With that they will subpoena documents ad nauseam. Then if a simple oversight is made and one page of paper is missing, the GOP will go straight for the jugular and accuse The Administration of obstruction of justice. Just like they did with Clinton. They never got him on the accusations they went in with, they instead set up a trap.
The GOP and The Right view Obama much like they viewed Bill Clinton — Barack Obama is not their President, he is not the political opposition. To the Republican Party, our President is the enemy of the state and deserves to be treated as such.
The Republican Party has one goal in mind, to destroy The President of The United States under any circumstances. It is up to us to put aside our mundane differences and fight to prevent this from happening. I dislike The Blue Dogs as much as any other Progressive, but refusing to vote or putting in a protest vote for a third party IS NOT progress. Fundamentally progressivism is about looking at the big picture and being patient. Acknowledging that the progress we want won't happen overnight. It is a decades long push that will continue to the end of time. We can't fall into the trap of making short term tactical mistakes just because The Blue Dogs are creeps. We have to suck it up. Don't think of a vote for a Blue Dog as a vote for that individual, think of it as a vote to keep this country from experiencing another impeachment nightmare, one that will be more depraved and socially destructive than anything we could have imagined in the 90s.