If I understand this Newsweek poll, 51% of Americans support impeaching President Bush. (28% say it should be a top priority, 23% think it should be a lower priority, and just 44% are opposed to doing so.) That’s more than ever supported impeaching President Clinton.
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As much as I would like to see that, the article states those figures for Democrats only. Over 70% of Republicans in America oppose impeachment. But still a significant figure, nonetheless.
“[T]he Republican base may be cracking.”
That’s what happens when you build your house on shale. On a similar note, I enjoyed this article in the NY Times on the loss of Republican morale. My favorite quote, though, is buried on page 2:
Oakland is Detroit area. Sure Michigan is socially conservative, but Mr. Bush’s grasp of minutia missed the fact that the Republicans flushed MI’s auto industry when they were supposed to save it post Clinton’s NAFTA. Who (of sense) in MI will vote for a Republican from the Detroit area now, when GM, Ford, and Chrysler plants have been shut down by foreign competition and computerized technology. That area’s unemployment has bounced between 9% and 15% all year.
That’s what I’d thought at first, but I’m pretty sure that’s not so. I’ve emphasized the key words here so others can see what I think I see:
Plus, I can’t figure out any way to get 47 from those 28/23/44 numbers. I’m pretty sure those last three numbers represent all Americans, with 47 being the only number that represents Democrats alone.
I’ve reread it, and you’re right. My mind seems to have skipped completely over the “of all Americans” piece as I was reading through.
Very interesting…
I went back and forth between Waldo’s entry and the article, and was similarly confused. The way Waldo put the two statistics together is illuminating. This is shocking news and ought to be making headlines.
Well, yeah — it’s just such a huge number (more than ever supported Clinton’s impeachment) that I figure either this is really big news or I’m misreading the numbers.
I fully support impeaching President Bush. The LaRouche argument, that we can’t do that because Cheney would become President (if Bush was forced to resign, like Nixon) is bogus. As wrong as I personally feel Cheny would be for our nation, he is the vice president and he should be given the chance to screw up himself, or be found guilty himself as his own actions dictate.
Bush should be impeached, and then tried, and then punished unless someone pardons him.
That’s what pisses me off most of all about Clinton’s impeachment. The Republicans played that card out of the deck BEFORE they appointed the Worst President Ever, so that if anyone tried to impeach Bush they could claim it was just partisan bickering and unfounded retaliation. The made a mockery and a sham out of the impeachment process, one term before the ability to impeach the president might have been REALLY useful.
You guys are out there! Like freakin’ Pluto!
Having a serious discussion about whether 50% of the country wants to impeach the President? Even Nancy Pelosi says it’s off the table. (Though I grant reparations wing-nut, Dem dinosaur John Conyers is for it.)
I especially like the post about what Lyndon LaRouche would do.
How is it “out there” to discuss the results of a poll, Will? If 51% of Americans believe that the president should be impeached, wouldn’t that very much be the mainstream American opinion and, by definition, not at all out there”? If you have evidence that this poll is incorrect, or that I’m reading the results wrong, please present it — clearly it’s what we’re all interested in hearing about.
I don’t need any empirical evidence to tell me the poll you cite is wildly off the mark. Everyday experience, common sense, and the utter lack any media attention to the poll’s results show me quite clearly that it was a “bad” poll. Garbage in, garbage out. Poorly worded questions. Skewed sample. Incorrect reporting of results. Take your pick. There’s no way a marjority support impeaching Bush right now, and I have a hard time believing you don’t know, or atleast sense that.
So what you’re saying is that you don’t agree with the results, so you believe that the poll was conducted badly, though you don’t have any evidence of that?
Not merely b/c I don’t agree with them. Doesn’t it strike you as odd that oh, say, Katie Couric or Wolf Blitzer or Brian Williams or Hillary Clinton or John Kerry or Al Gore hasn’t seized upon this poll as evidence of a new low in the president’s popularity? Doesn’t the lack of any attention to it set off alarm bells in your head?
I am, indeed, puzzled — which is why I started this blog entry with “If I understand this Newsweek poll…” and that’s why almost the entirety of the discussion here has been about how these numbers are curious and surprising. But it’s Newsweek, not Joe’s House of Lihbrul Polling. If it were a bad poll, why would they have published it? I just don’t get it.
And I agree with you that Newsweek is a serious and reputable jounalistic enterprise (Korans flushed down toilets at Gitmo notwithstanding). So, yes, it is puzzling.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I just got an cypher from Karl Rove that I must de-encrypt in order to obtain the new codes for the Diebold voting machines, if you know what I mean.
Just my $.02, but I take the 23% thinking it should be a low priority as something other than “Let’s impeach Bush, but first, we got to get this Social Security thing fixed.” I think it’s more of a “Whatever, guys–first actually take care of the things that really matter, and then, if you actually get through all that, come back and talk about impeachment.”
I don’t currently think Bush should be impeached. That said, if Newsweek were to call and ask if it was a high priority, low priority, or not even an option to be considered, I’d say it was a low priority. I wouldn’t rule it out, but there are bigger fish to fry.