Most Americans Oppose Lawsuit Or Impeachment By GOP

These charts were made from information contained in a recent CNN / ORC Poll. That survey was done between July 18th and 20th of a random national sample of 1,012 adults, and has a margin of error of 3 points (8.5 points or less for the individual groups).

The Republican Party in most states is now controlled by a combination of teabaggers and evangelicals, and this has pushed its elected representatives in Washington far to the right. And to please that extremist base, congressional Republicans have blocked any effort by President Obama to fix the economy, raise wages, repair our crumbling infrastructure, and create badly needed new jobs.

But even this total obstruction and refusal to compromise with Democrats on anything has not satisfied the party's extremist base -- a feeling based on those voters' unhappiness with an African-American inhabiting the White House. These base voters are demanding that their congressional representatives do even more to oppose the president -- and those representatives, in an effort to avoid facing a teabagger opponent in the primaries, have responded with a couple of ridiculous ideas.

The first is to file a lawsuit against President Obama. This suit alleges the president has failed to enforce all the provisions of Obamacare. The crazy part is that they are claiming he has not enforced a law that they have opposed since it was passed -- and have tried to repeal more than 40 times. The suit has no merit, but they aren't really serious about it anyway -- but only trying to keep their base happy by causing problems for the president.

The other idea is to impeach the president, and more congressional Republicans are talking about this than ever before. Of course, there is no basis for this since the president has done nothing that would justify his impeachment. But like the lawsuit, these Republicans know they could not impeach the president and are only talking it up to please their extremist and racist base.

But while these ideas may play well in the party primaries, they are not going to help them in the general election. That's because, as the charts above show, a substantial majority of Americans oppose both the lawsuit and impeachment. I think the Republicans are just shooting themselves in the foot again (a foot already riddled with bullet holes), and these crazy ideas may well hurt the party in the general election. This just gives Democrats more unpopular ideas to campaign against.