Joe Miller, running a distant third in Alaska’s Senate GOP primary, is calling on his fellow Republican candidates in that race to back his call for the impeachment of President Obama.
Mead Treadwell and Dan Sullivan, who are running in first and second place respectively in the GOP Senate primary according to the latest polling numbers, have kept their thumbs to themselves, declining to point those digits up or down.
That is nowhere near good enough for the man who beat Sen. Lisa Murkowski in the GOP Senate primary four years ago.
And as Real Clear Politics pointed out in early July, it is way too early to count him out, noting that Miller was also considered a “wild card” before he roared from behind to win the GOP Senate primary in 2010.
Miller trailed Murkowski by 32 points in July 2010, before being endorsed by Sarah Palin and charging to victory only a few weeks later.
He needs a Palin-kind of turbo-charged help again. Miller is so far out of it this time around that the CBS News poll didn’t even show how he would fare against Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) like it did with Sullivan and Treadwell.
However, Miller is closer to the top dog in the race than he was in 2010. The most recent Real Clear Politics aggregate of the polls shows Miller is 21.5 points behind Sullivan.
As part of his effort to build the kind of momentum that allowed him to beat Murkowski before the Aug. 19 primary, Miller is challenging Treadwell and Sullivan to get off their thumbs and call for the removal of Obama from the White House.
Miller is also using the “impeach now” theme as part of a campaign fundraising email letter that went out July 28.
“Today, I challenged my fellow Republican candidates to join me in calling for the impeachment of Barack Obama. We are a nation of laws, and this president continues to undermine the rule of law,” Miller said in the statement.
“Where does it end? If he can decide which laws he will and will not enforce, if he can create law by fiat, if he can abrogate Congressional action, we no longer have a democratic republic. Let’s call it what it is. It’s criminal.”
The way Miller sees it, “the long train of abuses from refusing to secure our border, to unilaterally changing our immigration laws and threatening to do so even more, to violating Americans’ First Amendment religious liberty rights, to violating their Fourth Amendment’s privacy protections, to changing provisions of ObamaCare, to making recess appointments when the Congress is not in recess, to Benghazi, to Fast and Furious, to the IRS scandal, all reveal a lawless presidency.”
The email statement also said, “It’s time to for the cheap talk about our being a nation of laws to end if we’re not ready to hold the president accountable. Congress must use its constitutionally authorized powers to end this illegitimate usurpation of authority and impeach the president. It’s time to rally around our Constitution and preserve the republic.”
Miller is also using the impeachment challenge to raise more money for his struggling campaign.
“If you want the next senator from Alaska to be someone who is committed to holding this president accountable to the people and the law, I ask for your support. Whether you can give $500, $250, $100, $50 or $25, it will help get our message out and prevail Election Day. Donate HERE.”
Miller is not the first Alaskan politician to call for Obama’s impeachment. This fever was started by former half-term Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
But the question needs to be asked: Are Miller, Palin and the rest who want Obama to be impeached really helping the Democrats solve their most glaring problem? Will this impeachment fever strike a spark under lukewarm independents and moderates who might now be motivated to turn out for the mid-term election in November?
The Washington Post reported the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee raised $2.1 million in online donations over four days in July — the best four days they have had in this election cycle — after using the prospect of impeachment to rally fundraising.
The DCCC brought in more than 114,000 donations from July 24 — when the House Rules Committee voted to go ahead with a lawsuit against Obama for executive overreach, not impeachment — through July 28.
CNN released a survey July 25 that showed only 33 percent of Americans want Obama impeached and removed from office. Sixty-five percent say “no” to the impeachment of the president.
But 57 percent of those who identified themselves to the CNN pollsters as Republicans say they want Obama impeached.
Michael Steele, the first African-American chairman of the Republican National Committee, said on the MSNBC Hardball program July 28 that those calling for impeachment are going to cripple the GOP.
“If you want to give the House back to the Democrats, if you really don’t want the Senate next year, and you want to take yourself out of contention for any kind of presidential politics in 2016, file those articles of impeachment tomorrow. Go ahead and do it, if you want to see where the American people really are,” he said.
“This is the last thing you want to talk about,” Steele continued, “unless your district is bleeding red.”
However Palin said the more Americans find out about the “impeachable offenses,” the more likely it is they will come to her side of this debate.
She wrote on her Facebook page July 27 that most Americans don’t even know what is impeachable and what is not.
Palin vowed in the post to educate Americans about the meaning of the word “impeachment” under the U.S. Constitution.
“The White House is counting on the fact that Americans think impeachment is for committing a crime under the penal code. But I’ll keep repeating the truth in order to educate as many Americans as possible,” Palin wrote.
“We’re saying he must be impeached for overstepping his Constitutional authority.”
(For complete 2014 midterm coverage, get your campaign fix on The Grid.)
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