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Gowdy is another rising conservative star in the House of Representatives. He exhorted his colleagues about Obama's rising lawlessness. "We make law!" He headed the ad hoc committee on Benghazi. Facebook posts and followers want the South Carolina Congressman to run for Speaker of the House.
This strong, savvy prosecutor does not want to impeach President Obama.
Before speaking his opposition to any impeachment, Gowdy talked about what Congress would need to do if Obama proceeds with his executive amnesty plans:
Well, there are three things. Number one, we need to persuade our fellow citizens that from 2008 to 2010 when he had the House and the Senate and the White House, he didn't do a damn thing about immigration. So why can't he give the Republican House and Senate three months, six months, nine months what he wasn't able to do in two years. So, the first tool is persuasion.
If President Obama does proceed with illegal executive action in immigration, Gowdy commented:
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| Congressman Trey Gowdy |
He's going to poison the well if he does that, and he needs to understand up front that if he wants a solution his way, if he wants an issue for their candidate to run on in 2016, then he will do what he is doing.
The second tool is the appropriations process, but frankly that is a tool best wielded in the spring and not in December when we're staring at an omnibus or comprehensive spending. But we have the Senate, and advice and consent specifically with this attorney general. Ask US Attorney Lynch: "What are the limits of prosecutorial discretion?" What laws does he actually have to enforce? Are election subject to his whim and caprice? Be very tough with advice and consent. Be very thoughtful with the appropriations process, and all the while persuade our fellow citizens. This is not a fight with the Republicans. This is a fight with the people who founded this Republic. It's not the way to pass law.
In summary:
Advice and consent would be the third.
Bill O'Reilly then raised the option of impeachment, since the President is making a new law, superseding the laws passed by Congress, and the President does not have that authority.
Gowdy floored him with a question:
"Have you met Joe Biden?" is my response to that. No, and nobody's discussing impeachment except pundits and commentators. First of all, impeachment is a punishment, not a remedy. Second of all, the only people who want us to talk about impeachment are the President's allies.
O'Reilly summed up position: "You see it as bait that you're not going to take."
I'm not going to take it because I've met Joe Biden. That's not the answer, to replace Barack Obama. . . He would be the new President.
After O'Reilly lamented the breakdown of Congress' getting anything done on domestic or foreign policy, Gowdy concurred:
There are Democrats that we welcome the chance to work with. Luis Gutierrez, although I disagree with him on policy, is an immanently trustworthy participant. So is Zoe Lofgren of California. But the President is going to destroy whatever remnant of trust exists between Republicans in Congress and his administration if he does by fiat what he wouldn't do in two years, what he could have done.
I just watched sixty new members of the House that were elected last week. They deserve the chance to participate in this debate. That's the way this system works.
Congressman Gowdy understands how government works, and how federal politics really works. Impeachment would be disastrous politically, giving President Obama victim status, and staining the Republicans as harsh (even prejudiced) obstructionists. One of the harshest critics of the Obama Administration, and one of the most ardent of staunch Constitutionalists, Gowdy explains perfectly why impeachment is a non-starter for the next Republican Congress.
As President Obama readies his phone and pen to ignore immigration laws for two more years, conservative pundits and Republican activists should resist calls for impeachment, but rather pressure lawmakers, Democrat and Republican, to hold down the President's options, cut funding for illegal maneuvers, and allow Republicans like Gowdy to chart a positive agenda for the next two years in Washington.
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