House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy: Impeachment off the Table

Even before President Barack Obama potentially enacts executive amnesty that even liberal constitutional law professor, Jonathan Turley, said could be grounds for impeachment, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) took impeachment completely off the table.

When David Brody asked him during an interview this week if impeachment was off the table, McCarthy answered, “Oh yes.”

Echoing House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), who said impeachment talk was a “scam” ginned up by Democrats, McCarthy said, “The only one talking about that are Democrats, and they’re doing it because they want to make it political.” He then supported Boehner’s lawsuit against Obama, which critics said may not have standing and would further embolden Obama. As Andrew McCarthy, the former federal prosecutor, noted, impeachment is the constitutional remedy for executive overreach.

Conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh recently criticized Boehner and the “squeamish” GOP leadership for removing the impeachment threat, which could deter Obama from “going big” on executive amnesty. 

“I don’t like all these things being ‘taken off the table,’ by the way,” Limbaugh declared. “We just said we’re not gonna shut the government down, so we’re not gonna use the power of the purse to stop Obama. Okay. Now we’re saying impeachment’s off the table, so we’re not gonna use the Constitution to stop Obama.”

Limbaugh said he was tired of the GOP leadership “bragging or broadcasting that they’re not gonna do anything to stop Obama” because they think they can’t be mean to Obama. 

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who called for impeachment, asserting that illegal immigration was the tipping point since it impacted American workers of all backgrounds, agreed with Limbaugh. 

“Rush is right,” Palin said, adding:

The GOP wants to take impeachment off the table? When will you learn liberals won’t hate you less if you play nice in these tumultuous times? No matter how polite, complacent, and complicit you are, Obama will continue to harm our Republic and make you impotent. Even today, his very un-presidential speech mocked you for always being a’ “hatin’.” Your apathy is their power.

Andrew McCarthy, the author of Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obama’s Impeachment, recently wrote in National Review that “contrary to some less than informed opinion, ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ – the legal standard for impeachment – refers not to indictable criminal offenses but to profound breaches of the public trust by high-ranking officials.”

“Once the standard is understood, it becomes easy to see that the President and his underlings have committed numerous, readily provable impeachable offenses,” he said.