Elite conservatives are very worried about 2006. So how does Paul Weyrich, the influential conservative outsider, respond? By telling his followers that House Democrats will impeach President Bush if they take back the House:

The second reason [to vote in 2006] can be reduced to a single word. Impeachment. Right now leftist Members of the House are meeting regularly with outside groups such as Moveon.org and are preparing for impeachment. It looked bizarre, too, when Father Robert F. Drinan (D-MA) and a handful of others, such as John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI), in 1972 similarly were planning for the impeachment of President Nixon. When the moment of truth came they were ready.

I am here to tell you that if Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is Speaker of the House come next year George W. Bush will be impeached. It just takes a majority. There still is residual anger over the impeachment of President Clinton. I may have differences with President Bush (it is difficult to forgive his having signed McCain-Feingold, which is causing so many problems relating to free speech) but still I do not want to see the country, especially during a time of war, go through impeachment. It would tear America apart and give aid and comfort to our enemies.

Perhaps you haven’t heard it before. Well, you have now. Impeachment. Coming your way if there are changes in who controls the House eight months from now. If the President and Congress get their act together, and with the possibility of another Supreme Court appointment in the background, and impeachment on the horizon, maybe, just maybe, conservatives would not stay at home after all. John Gizzi would not mind one bit having sounded the alarm.

Does anyone actually think the House Democrats would impeach Bush on a narrow party-line vote knowing they will fail to convict in the Senate? Barring some sort of blockbuster revelation, this seems improbable. From Weyrich’s perspective, of course, the facts are immaterial; the point is to get the base motivated, and the prospect of a Speaker Pelosi-led impeachment might be quite effective.