Newt Gingrich Discusses Potential Obama Impeachment (VIDEO)

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said Friday that President Obama had overstepped his constitutional authority with his recent decision to order his administration to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act. While the move didn't immediately open Obama up to impeachment, Gingrich claimed, it did raise his worry about a future constitutional crisis.

In an interview with Newsmax, Gingrich characterized the president's latest announcement regarding DOMA, a law that allows states to not honor gay marriages, as "a dereliction of duty and a violation of his constitutional oath" that "cannot be allowed to stand."

On Wednesday, Attorney General Eric Holder said Obama had determined that his administration would no longer defend a law defining marriage as only between a man and a woman, but that it would continue to be enforced pending an actual legislative overturn.

Gingrich on Friday said that this plan of action was unacceptable.

"He swore an oath on the Bible to become president that he would uphold the Constitution and enforce the laws of the United States," Gingrich said. "He is not a one-person Supreme Court. The idea that we now have the rule of Obama instead of the rule of law should frighten everybody."

While Obama was sheltered by the left, which "likes the policy," Gingrich claimed, he proposed another situation that he suggested would have caused much more clamor.

"Imagine that Governor Palin had become president," Gingrich said. "Imagine that she had announced that Roe versus Wade in her view was unconstitutional and therefore the United States government would no longer protect anyone's right to have an abortion because she personally had decided it should be changed. The news media would have gone crazy. The New York Times would have demanded her impeachment."

He then provided a potential legislative solution based on his belief that what the president was doing was unconstitutional.

"I believe the House Republicans next week should pass a resolution instructing the president to enforce the law and to obey his own constitutional oath, and they should say if he fails to do so that they will zero out [defund] the office of attorney general and take other steps as necessary until the president agrees to do his job," Gingrich said.

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Comments

[builderman55]

07:30 PM on 03/04/2011

We wish your mouth would impeach your brain...

[schmitizensane]

11:20 AM on 03/02/2011

Yeah, let us all listen to the guy who can't even uphold his wedding vows.

[srader626]

07:30 PM on 03/04/2011

Hey, we're better than the conservatives. Try not to use their favorite fallacy - ad hominem. Instead point out his flaws in intellectual ability.

[talkstocoyotes]

07:00 AM on 03/05/2011

Overlooking an obvious moral contradiction in a politician isn't "being better." It's cowardice.

[Manuel Little]

11:41 PM on 03/05/2011

The personal life of anyone is not the subject of discussion. Clinton signed DOMA, and made a ridicule of the US Presidency Office world-wide. Does that make DOMA a non-law? Are you saying that all congressmen/women would have to uphold their wedding vows, and that this would make a difference as to the constitutionality of DOMA. Your way of thinking is ad hominem - not new.

[shocktreatment]

07:02 PM on 03/01/2011

"He swore an oath on the Bible to become president that he would uphold the Constitution and enforce the laws of the United States," Gingrich said.

Gingrich, that hideous goblin, gets it wrong again. The difference between 'not enforcing the laws of the land' and 'not defending the constitutionality of a law' is not a subtle one, but a glaring, obvious one.

[KnifeEdgePass]

10:19 AM on 03/02/2011

Are you suggesting that BHO decides which laws to enforce based on his own interpretation of its constitutionality?

[shocktreatment]

11:23 AM on 03/02/2011

No, knifey, merely, and exactly what I posted.

Here, I'll type slowly: Obama and the Dept of Justice are enforcing laws as they stand, "his own interpretation of its constitutionality" has nothing to do with anything.

The Dept of Justice is declining to provide council to defend constitutional challenges to this particular law that are being raised by citizens. The difference is completely obvious, or should be--

[kwoodgr]

08:18 PM on 03/04/2011

He's not smart enough to know the difference.

[falcon269yahoo]

03:23 PM on 03/01/2011

DOMA has been ruled unlawful in the courts. President Obama supports the Constitution, and his oath, by not continuing the appeal! A little constitutional law, Newt. Are you really ready to be president, mister school teacher?

[Godfearing]

02:23 PM on 03/01/2011

When is Karl Rove going to kick Newt out of the party like he is doing to Palin?

The Christian Republican Tea Party Birther Union Busting movement want the
third Bush (Jeb) to run in order to invade the whole middle east and get it over with.

[Cherie Lyon]

01:36 PM on 03/01/2011

Mr. G considers marriage so important that he did it three times.

Oh - wait, you all know that joke by now....

[Kathy Dukes]

01:09 PM on 03/01/2011

Newt : Last time you were involved in such an action it was against Pres Bill Clinton. You were having an affair at the time. Are you at it again Newt?

[Godfearing]

02:27 PM on 03/01/2011

The Pro-life Christians will never accept Newt for president since had vacectomy according to his sister's book Accidental Activist.

[builderman55]

07:31 PM on 03/04/2011

Is it against Christian principles to screw a country while married??

[talkstocoyotes]

07:02 AM on 03/05/2011

+++Is it against Christian principles to screw a country while married??+++

Not if the intent is procreation -- producing a new little [Third World] country.

[joelb5000]

12:14 PM on 03/01/2011

Get over it Gingrich. What if your Republican cronies passed a law saying Americans didn't have Freedom of Speech. Should the President defend that too? If something is clearly unconstitutional, the President--who took an oath to defend the Constitution--shouldn't be compelled to defend the congressional law over the US Constitution.

[NOV42008]

10:31 AM on 03/01/2011

Lets put it this way, if Newt proceed with this impeachment will it cost money? I thought the country wanted to stop spending, not increase it. I understand it cost millions to try to impeach Clinton, we need an estimate of how much you think this will cost, and is Newt willing to pay for it himself?

[blueplano]

10:13 AM on 03/01/2011

but buh buh how can you impeach him - he didn't get a bee-jay in the oval office.

[usamade]

10:11 AM on 03/01/2011

He babbles like Charlie Sheen.

[duckpuddle]

09:14 AM on 03/01/2011

Does he really believe that nobody thinks anymore?

[dmsdzinr]

08:25 AM on 03/01/2011

Newt: All Sound & Fury signifying NOTHING!

[Shelia Washington]

08:12 AM on 03/01/2011

Newt is a very unhappy person. Hate will destroy you from within, let go Newt, heartache does not discriminate.

[tvhatic]

07:47 AM on 03/01/2011

Obama did not say that courts do not have to follow the law. He simply said that federal funds will not pay for federal lawyers to argue this in court. The judge still decides the case outcome.

The roe vs wade analogy is not even close to what the president has said. Roe vs Wade is not defended by federally paid lawyers. It is defended by judges who understand the laws and past rulings. Citizens and community organizations bring up the lawsuits against potential violations.

How someone can even suggest these are the same is dumbfounding.