Dem: Republicans eye ‘impeachment circus’

Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) says congressional Republicans are planning an “impeachment circus” to thwart President Obama’s legislative goals on the economy and immigration reform.

“It’s like a magician who snaps his fingers in one place so you won`t see what he`s doing with his other hand,” McDermott said Friday during an appearance on MSNBC. “They are basically trying to keep the president from doing anything on jobs or on immigration or on climate change or any other issue that the American people are facing or pensions or anything.”

The former House Ethics Committee chairman said that Republicans would turn to the impeachment strategy after they were unsuccessful in using the debt ceiling and government shutdown as leverage to dismantle ObamaCare.

“They’ve run the let’s run the country over the cliff strategy and that didn’t work. And so now back at the second one of the Republican strategies. That is let`s impeach the president,” McDermott said.

The Washington Democrat warned that “as long as they can keep this impeachment circus going, nobody will pay any attention” to more substantive policy issues.

A number of Republicans, including Texas Reps. Steve Stockman and Blake Farenthold, as well as Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) have suggested that the House of Representatives could consider impeachment procedures.

Still, there’s been no movement by House Republican leadership to pursue such a strategy.

McDermott predicted that even if Republicans fulfilled his prophecy and did undertake impeachment proceedings, they would not prevail.

“That`s exactly what they did to Clinton and they are going to fail at this,” McDermott told MSNBC on Friday. “They simply believe that it`s an impeachable offense if they don’t agree with it.”