THERE'S A NEW QUESTION THAT'S BEGINNING TO POP UP IN THE POLLS that's very interesting: "Should President Bush be impeached and removed from office?" Three polls that I know of (TPM) have asked this question recently, and the answer ranges from 39% to 45% SUPPORT impeachment! Personally I'm surprised that the pollsters are taking the question seriously enough to ask it. And I'm astounded that so many voters say they want Bush impeached and removed from office. I honestly didn't think that many people were paying attention enough to have an opinion. So, let's think about this question seriously, for the moment, and what it might mean. Not just immediate results, but what the implications for the future are. What might the consequences be if we don't impeach? What about Cheney? Should we impeach one without the other? Or would that take us from the frying pan into the fire?

I don't know about you, but it takes me about 2 1/2 seconds to crank all the way over into outrage every morning when I look at the news. Every day there's some new revelation of the latest violation of our constitution by Bushco, it seems like. From lying us into a war that has cost us lives, hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars, and our standing in the world, to betraying a working CIA undercover operative in the counterproliferation department seeking out WMD in a time of war, to firing insufficiently partisan US Attorneys and replacing them with political hacks whose brief it is to indite Democrats and pursue bogus "voter fraud" cases while ignoring massive republican-run election fraud, to secretive warrant-less wiretapping of citizens in direct contravention of the FISA laws and the 4th Amendment to the Constitution, to refusing to comply with duly authorized subpoenas and oversight by the duly constituted congress, to the commuting of the sentence of a convicted felon for perjury and obstruction of justice to prevent said felon from spilling the beans about the parts that the President and Vice President took in regards to the treasonous betrayal of a CIA operative for political purposes. This has been the most lawless, unconstitutional administration ever. We can argue over the particulars and justifications, but it has become increasingly clear that this bunch doesn't feel bound by their oaths to uphold the Constitution . What they're doing today is bad. But what really worries me is what about tomorrow? What happens to a constitutional democracy when the executive branch (including whatever Cheney is calling his own personal branch today) is allowed to run roughshod over the Constitution and there are no legal consequences for doing so? We must remember that our justice system is largely based on precedent. What we allow to happen today will be taken as permission tomorrow- a principle every parent understands. What happens to tomorrow's precedent if Bushco is not reined in and spanked?

A main principle with these Authoritarian types is the belief that the reason that conservatism (being a vastly superior set of political precepts, snark) has not so far been wildly successful is because previous conservative incarnations have not been tough enough. They believe that the only thing that Reagan did wrong was not pushing the conservative agenda hard enough. So here we have Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove and Libby, et al, lying, torturing, misdirecting, and deciding which laws to ignore in service of their agenda. And they are RIGHT NOW setting a precedent for right wingers to come. They are teaching future generations of conservative politicians and authoritarians that they too can break the law and the constitution and get away with it. Six years in, we can see that these people NEVER admit a mistake or revisit a the wisdom of a decision. They are in deep, and THEY'RE STILL DIGGING. Anybody who thinks Bushco isn't going to brazen out the rest of their term, doing exactly as they have been, raise your hand, these nice men in white coats would like to speak with you.

Impeachment is not such an outlandish idea anymore. Remember that one of the articles of impeachment for Richard Nixon concerned failure to produce subpoenaed documents. Does anybody think that Rove, or Gonzales, or Cheney is going to suddenly discover their "missing" gwb43.com emails and turn them over to Patrick Leahy with an apology? These guys are making precedent! They don't turn over the emails and suddenly no future administration has to comply with subpoenas issued by the Congress.

Our current crop of right-wingnuts, I mean, Republican Presidential Candidates, are, with the exception of Ron Paul, all defending Bush's policies and his "right" to wield any and all power he deems necessary as "Commander in Chief". They think that Bush is and has been right in every jot and tittle. In fact, Romney thinks we should "double the size of Guantanamo", McCain thinks we should increase and prolong the "Surge" in Iraq, Guiliani thinks we should bomb Iran, and Tancredo thinks we should round up every illegal in the country, REGARDLESS of price and deport them. These guys are all running to the RIGHT of Bush. Today's conservatives have already learned from Bushco that extremism in the name of the conservative agenda is no sin at all, and that the wimpy Democratic congress won't do anything to stop them except wring their hands. We the sheeple are allowing this to happen. So maybe we Dems WILL win the next election. We probably will. But by then the damage will have been done. What happens when the political pendulum swings right again, as it always does? Our 2 party system is by nature a teeter-totter. In 4, or 8, or 12 years we could be heading back into a period of conservatism, and those conservatives will have learned how to garner, use and keep power from Bushco and from a congress more worried that Bush will say something mean about them than they are about the 39% to 45% of voters who currently think that Bushco should be impeached for their crimes. What happens when those future conservatives learn, and they WILL, that the only thing Bushco did wrong was not push hard enough?

Having set the precedent today, that the unitary executive theory of presidential power is legal, what will stop future conservatives from tipping all the way over into tyranny? Love of country? Respect for the Constitution? Please. Hey, they rigged the elections in 2000 and 2004 (precedent!), why not push harder? They already suspended Habeus Corpus and got away with it, why not free and fair elections? It's a short slide.

My question isn't "Should Bush and Cheney be Impeached and removed from office?" My question is can our constitutional democracy survive if we don't?