WASHINGTON — ON the 50th anniversaryof Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream”speech, Ker ry Bentivolio, a Michigancongressman, has a dream, too: to impeach thenation’s first black president.
“If I could write that bill and submit it, it wouldbe a dream come true,” the freshman Republicantold a local G.O.P. club meeting Monday inBirmingham, Mich., in a video posted onYouTube and reported by BuzzFeed.
Bentivolio graciously conceded that he’dhave to come up with some grounds first. “Iwent back to my office and I have had lawyerscome in,” he said. “And these are lawyers, well— Ph.D.’s in history — I said, ‘Tell me how Ican impeach the president of the United States.
What evidence do you have?’ You’ve got to havethe evidence.”The Tea Party congressman, a member ofthe House Oversight and Government ReformCommittee, hopes to find e-mails linkingthe White House to the I.R.S. examination ofgroups with a “Tea Party” label seeking taxexemptstatus.
“I stood 12 feet away from the guy andlistened to him and I couldn’t stand being there,”he said of President Obama, “but because he ispresident I have to respect the office.”Bentivolio is the perfect avatar of theimpeachment fever gripping a G.O.P. that’sunmoored from reality, given that he onceadmitted in a court deposition, “I have aproblem figuring out which one I really am,Santa Claus or Kerry Bentivolio.” That’s why hesometimes used the pronoun “we.”He’s been playing Santa Claus — as part ofa business he started 19 years ago called OldFashion Santa — with his own six reindeer. “Toproject authenticity, he’s even sought clearancefrom Selfridge Air National Guard Base inMount Clemens to fly his sleigh in its airspaceon Christmas Eve,” Kathleen Gray wrote in TheDetroit Free Press.
He told National Review that he takes beingcalled crazy as a compliment, so “it didn’t reallybother me when people were saying, ‘That guy’skooky because he has reindeer.’ No, they’rekooky because they don’t have ‘em.”Bentivolio also had a small role “in alow-budget independent film that seemedto suggest that 9/11 was an inside job,” themagazine said.
The Free Press reported that Bentivolio, noEdmund Gwenn in “Miracle on 34th Street,”left a teaching job in 2011 “after complaints hebullied students, even telling one class on its firstday that his goal was to make all the studentscry once during the year.” How much moregratifying to bully the president.
Not content with fighting off a popularimmigration overhaul or threatening to shutdown the government and set off the first federaldefault, hard-core Congressional Republicanswant to nullify the election. Unlike when theRepublicans did their nutty impeachment ofBill Clinton — (Newt Gingrich is back, starringin the “Crossfire” reboot) — they don’t evencontrol the Senate. And as David Axelrod toldme, there isn’t a “scintilla of justification.”It’s lucky the president got another dog if TomCoburn is his friend. At a town hall in MuskogeeWednesday, when an audience member calledthe administration “lawless,” the Oklahomasenator said his buddy was “getting perilouslyclose” to the standard of high crimes andmisdemeanors.
“I wonder what Coburn is saying about hisenemies,” Axelrod says dryly.
In Texas recently, another Republicancongressman, Blake Farenthold, answered abirther at a town hall. “If we were to impeach thepresident tomorrow, we would probably get thevotes in the House of Representatives to do it,”he said, but added that it would never pass in theSenate.
At another Texas session Monday, someoneasked Senator Ted Cruz (R-Canada), whythey couldn’t impeach Obama. “It’s a goodquestion,” Cruz replied, before noting thatDemocrats control the Senate.
Earlier this month, the president’s motorcadepulled into the Orlando Hilton and was greetedby about 50 protesters holding signs saying“Kenyan Go Home,” “Impeach Obama” and“Obama Lies.”BuzzFeed had a pictorial on the “Overpassesfor Obama’s Impeachment” fad, where peoplehold up homemade signs on overpasses.
And they reported on 100,000 preorders forthe book “Impeachable Offenses: The Casefor Removing Barack Obama from Office,”covering sore points from Benghazi toObamacare to T.S.A. screenings.
This month has been rife with efforts amongthe G.O.P. “wise men,” using every channelpossible — polls, op-eds, cable, Twitter — totry to talk sense to the goons of August. WhenCondi Rice is a “wise man,” you know you’re introuble.
The Democrats never impeached W. andthey had real grounds: starting a war on falsepremises and sanctioning torture. “TheRepublican Party is in a constant strugglebetween its ego and its id,” Axelrod says, “andthe id has mostly won out lately.”It isn’t the president who should leave. It’s themisguided lawmakers trying to drive him out.
For some of the rodeo clowns clamoringfor impeachment around the country, BarackObama’s real crime is presiding while black.
