GOP Catches Impeachment Fever Over Obama’s Executive Order

Arizona Republican Rep. Matt Salmon speaks to supporters at the Republican election night festivities Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2014, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
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Add Rep. Matt Salmon (R-AZ) charges forward in saying that if President Barack Obama takes executive action to slow deportations of undocumented immigrations he will have performed an impeachable offense. The idea is spreading quickly.

“Well, Charles Krauthammer was asked that same question and I think, just recently on one of the news programs and I have to agree with him of course it would be,” Salmon said on Newsmax TV.

Even Salmon, though, admitted that impeaching Obama wouldn’t be easy.

“But committing an impeachable offense and getting, ya know, the two-thirds in the Senate to convict are two different stories,” Salmon added. “So, I mean, we have to play the hand that we are dealt right now.”

Salmon’s comments, flagged by Buzzfeed on Friday, are actually the latest in a list of Republicans who have made the same argument. Before Salmon conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer also suggested that a possible Obama executive action move on immigration would be “an impeachable offense.”

A day earlier Brietbart’s Caroline May reported that Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) also suggested that impeachment should be an option if Obama takes executive action.

“To me a constitutional question means that we have the option of impeachment,” Jones said.

The calls for impeachment (or predictions about calls for impeachment) is also reaching a fever pitch on Fox News.

Mother Jones magazine also compiled a helpful list of others who have made this same call in the past.

  • Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) said “impeachment would be a consideration, yes sir.”

  • Rep. Ted Yoho (R-FL) suggested that if Obama took executive action he would leave “Congress no option” but impeachment.
  • There was also Rep. Steve King (R-IA) who said “I think Congress has to sit down and have a serious look at the rest of this Constitution and that includes that ‘I’ word that we don’t want to say.”

  • Outgoing Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX) said Obama “wants us to impeach him now, before the midterm election because his senior advisers believe that is the only chance the Democratic Party has to avoid a major electoral defeat. Evidently Obama believes impeachment could motivate the Democratic Party base to come out and vote.”
  • Last but certainly not least was Sarah Palin, who said Obama’s unsecured border crisis is the last straw that makes the battered wife say, ‘no mas.'”

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