In the event he is impeached, will Senate Democrats even have Obama's back?

[karynnj]

83. Completely agree, but they actually will have less success in one important way than with Clinton

Their numbers will be better - likely in both the House and Senate. The important way is that the impeachment of Clinton has made the story of Lewinski something that even the sparsest biography of Clinton will include. Otherwise, his infidelities might have been mentioned to the degree that those of Johnson, FDR, Kennedy, Eisenhower ... are included. I would assume that he never pictured himself as a 2 term President whose best known words were both ignominius and (to many) a lie.

I would imagine that it might be more like the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, who was really impeached over overt political issues - mainly how to deal with the Southern states that had left the union once they returned.

Obama has not broken any laws. There is debate on how far executive orders can go. However, the real method of dealing with that - per the Constitution - is not to impeach the President, but take the issue to the Supreme Court. (A Supreme Court, incidentally, balanced slightly in their favor.)

I agree with you that they can impeach, can't remove and have the motivation in hating Obama. However, consider what initiating impeachment would do to the Republicans:

1) It would take over the House for however long they need to both grandstand and impeach him. Now, I know it was done in the lame duck session for Clinton, BUT they already had the special councilor and legal opinions that he did lie under oath (disputed of course). They did not need to develop the charges, investigate them or anything else - the Starr report did that.)

What charges could you have for Obama? He used EO with the EPA to control pollution - after the SC did rule that they could. The IRS "scandal" - that simply was the nonpartisan IRS trying to do the oversight the law required them to. Now the idiotic Gruber nonsense - that he tricked the House and Senate into not knowing that many pay more for insurance than they get back (duh!) - Note that because ONLY Democrats voted for it - if they all indicated they really weren't so stupid that they did not get this, it goes away. (Seriously, is there any reasonably intelligent person who does not get that if you remain very healthy, you will have paid more than you got --- and that you are much happier with that than having profited due to major illness!)

As to foreign policy, there is no precedent. GWB lied us into war, Reagan broke the law with Iran/Contra in multiple ways. There is nothing as glaring that Obama has done -- and he is asking for Congressional approval - which he always said he would like - on the fight against ISIS. (In fact, the problems the Republicans may have in using FP is that they want something more aggressive than what happened.)