Here are the elements, which would indicate that all the ingredients for America's worst political nightmare, are now simultaneously, in play:
1. Congress has twice in recent weeks gone on record saying that President Obama exceeded his authority and committed a violation of the War Powers Act.
2. President Obama has already delivered evidence that his much vaunted political negotiation skills are overvalued and may be inconsequential at best.
3. The Republicans would not hesitate to use the threat of Impeachment proceedings as a bargaining chip in the budget crises negotiations.
The Republicans have delivered circumstantial evidence that they are all in accord regarding a reevaluation of values for the tax structure, Medicare, the Social Security Program, the President's power to pick and choose America's wars, the mission of the United States Supreme Court, and union busting (to name just a few). Asking if they are unscrupulous enough to initiate political blackmail to further their agenda seems to be an unnecessary diversion into an irrelevant debating point. Wouldn't the harshest critics of the Republican Party concede that the disciples of Ayn S. Rand would cheerfully be willing to do anything to achieve their goals?
If President Obama is vulnerable to political blackmail in the form of Republican threats to immediately initiate Impeachment proceedings for violations of the War Powers Act, then his effectiveness as a President is crippled and rendered useless.
If the Congress has twice voted to endorse the idea that he exceeded his authority with his military actions against Libya (which they have) then, at any moment of the Republican leadership's choosing, they can use the threat of immediate impeachment proceedings as a bargaining chip during any closed door negotiating sessions for other issues (such as the debt ceiling).
When that threat was delivered, the President would then have an extremely difficult decision to make: He could remove the Republican advantage by immediately resigning or he could put his selfish instincts for political survival ahead of his patriotic instincts and blithely ignore his own vulnerability to manipulation via extortion and blackmail threats and quietly give in. Using his past negotiating record as the basis for any "tells," how well do you think he would be able to stand up against any such hypothetical coercion?
At any moment, the debt limit negotiations may turn into a variation of the "Let's Play Master and Slave" game.
If President Obama chooses to ignore the implications of complete ineffectiveness for his party (and the country); then the Democrats will have a very difficult choice to make. They can either make the impeachment threat themselves "Resign tonight or we will make the move to start impeachment proceedings in the morning" or they can let Obama undertake a kamikaze reelection campaign which will reek of self-destructive hubris.
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