Calls for Obama's Impeachment Weaken Tea Party Brand

As I fired up my twitter account this morning, I saw the following tweet:

LOLZ RT @georgetalbot: Today’s column: Alabama candidates vow to impeach Obama: bit.ly/y37Pyc

— Nathan Lindsay (@NathanLindsay) February 1, 2012

This is the beauty of Twitter that the uninitiated just don’t understand. Time and time again the Twitter-resistant have told me, “I don’t see the point. I don’t want to send out a status update every time I go to the grocery store and I don’t want to read other people’s statuses about that kind of nonsense either.” Well, I agree. But keeping up with the mundane details of people’s personal lives isn’t the reason Twitter has become an invaluable resource for hundreds of millions of people around the world.

Twitter is not as much about content creation as it is about content curation.

Rather than sitting around watching TV & thumbing threw newspaper articles, websites and blogs, I follow people on Twitter whose opinions I trust and who share op-eds, videos, and news stories that I will want to see. They act as a filter, curating content that suits my interests and I try to do the same for the people who follow me.

All of this Twitter business is beside the point but what I’m saying is, when I saw Nathan Lindsay’s (Business Council of Alabama) tweet, I immediately clicked through to read George Talbot’s piece in today’s Mobile Press Register entitled, “Alabama candidates vow: ‘Impeach Obama'”

In the column, Talbot talks about a Tea Party meeting in Fairhope at which Judge Roy Moore spoke along with a couple of congressional candidates named Pete Riehm and Dean Young who are challenging Congressman Jo Bonner in the upcoming GOP primary in District 1.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

Riehm, of Mobile, and Young, of Orange Beach, are both running insurgent campaigns against a popular, well-funded incumbent. Neither Bonner nor Peter Gounares, a fourth candidate in the GOP field, were in attendance for the event, held at the Homestead Village retirement community.

Riehm and Young were asked if they would commit to introducing articles of impeachment against President Barack Obama. Both gave a resounding “yes,” drawing vigorous approval from the crowd.

First of all, I consider myself a Tea Partier. I believe that shrinking the size of our government will make us more free and prosperous. I believe the U.S. private sector economy is the greatest wealth creating machine in the history of mankind. I believe it has done more to raise individuals out of poverty than any government concoction ever dreamed of doing.

I believe history has proven that our conservative ideas work and that we win any rational argument against liberalism which is why liberals so often resort to demagoguery and smear campaigns in an effort to tip the scales in their favor.

I believe the Bible and the Constitution are the two greatest documents ever written and I try to live my life according to the former and think our nation should be governed according to the latter.

…So save all your hate mail for someone else…

But I just don’t believe making false claims about impeaching the President is a winning strategy for a GOP candidate. That’s what Democrats do — make stuff up. And why should we have to make stuff up when the facts are on our side?

Put simply, issues like this and the birther nonsense are the kind of looney toons shenanigans that have weakened the Tea Party brand. 2010 showed that we win when we hammer the Democrats on overtaxing, overspending and mortgaging away the future of our kids and grandkids.

I don’t have a horse in the race down in District 1. I’ve only briefly met Congressman Bonner and much of what I’ve seen from the other candidates, including the ones mentioned in this story, leads me to believe that we agree on a lot. I just can’t take any more of the posturing and pandering that provides our real opposition with campaign fodder and undermines our mission and cause.

Barack Obama won’t be the President in 2013 but articles of impeachment won’t have anything to do with it.