Republicans for Cindy Sheehan!

Expect to see that odd event crop up in the event that Cindy Sheehan isn't going to back down from this as she did in her previously retracted threat to run against Dianne Feinstein.

Now, she claims she'll run against Nancy Pelosi if Pelosi doesn't file impeachment proceedings against President Bush by July 23.

"Democrats and Americans feel betrayed by the Democratic leadership," Sheehan told The Associated Press. "We hired them to bring an end to the war. I'm not too far from San Francisco, so it wouldn't be too big of a move for me. I would give her a run for her money."

I have no doubt that Sheehan would have her share of supporters, but let's do something one wonders whether Sheehan has done yet - imagine what would happen if she won. Presumably, she'd caucus with the Democrats, not the Republicans. (Not a huge leap of faith to take.) Isn't in her interest to ensure that the party she'd work with to effect any type of change not be reeling from its House Majority Leader getting voted out office?

Any Republican worth his or her salt would be licking their lips in anticipation of working with a political novice instead of Pelosi. One of the reasons Republicans are so acidic and loathsome of Pelosi is that she's good at what she does. Her colleagues obviously think so too, and so far I think she's done a fine job as the House Majority Leader.

Sheehan is in some respects an iconic figure of the Iraq War, and I respect her and can't imagine the depths of her loss with her son dying in that war. I thought it was an awful political statement by the Bush administration to not find some way to talk with her during her standoff, and a pretty awful human statement as well.

But this is just dumb. It's counterproductive to her goal of ending the war and impeaching Bush and Cheney. I know that people who hope that both those things happen before January 2009 can't stand that Pelosi and Harry Reid have essentially said that impeachment is off the table, and that they capitulated on setting a timeline for withdrawal from this clusterfuck in Iraq.

But if Sheehan was actually serious about this, actually wanted to serve in office for this purpose, she'd move somewhere where she could unseat someone who didn't want those things to happen. She's not serious, she's just pissed off like a lot of people. But this is bluster, pure and simple, and likely to be ineffective in all ways besides putting another crack in the Democratic Party's base.

For the record, I think it's an almost impossibility for us to be out of Iraq by the time Bush leaves office, but I'd hope our Commander In Chief and his staff come up with a better strategy than "Keep On Keeping On." And that the cost of the war was included in the overall budget for the year.

As for impeachment, certainly by the standards of how Bill Clinton was subject to impeachment, Bush and Cheney qualify and then some. Only the most jaded person would think that they haven't been more untruthful at some times that when Clinton claimed to have not been unfaithful. It's preposterous to suggest otherwise. But what Republicans effectively did with that expensive, national charade, was destroy the concept of what impeachment really means. It won't really do anything, and whatever the outcome of it, Bush and Cheney will never abide by them. (They won't answer a subopoena or respect the laws signed by Congress, why should this be any different?) All it will do is rally up the Republican base, which (despite what some commenters on this blog might think) is pretty fractured right now. Aside from nominating Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee, running a full-scale impeachment proceedings would be the next best thing for rallying a Republican base of the kind of people who right now are leaning towards Democrats or simply staying home.