We’ve reached an interesting place politically when Pat Buchanan’s the guy calling for cooler heads to prevail.

On the upside, though, this is a perfect opening topic for Palin and Rosie O’Donnell to debate when they both join “The View.”

The federal government is trillions of dollars in debt, many cities are on the verge of insolvency, our overrun healthcare system, police forces, social services, schools, and our unsustainably generous welfare-state programs are stretched to the max. We average Americans know that. So why has this issue been allowed to be turned upside down with our “leader” creating such unsafe conditions while at the same time obstructing any economic recovery by creating more dependents than he allows producers? His friendly wealthy bipartisan elite, who want cheap foreign labor and can afford for themselves the best “border security” money can buy in their own exclusive communities, do not care that Obama tapped us out…

President Obama’s rewarding of lawlessness, including his own, is the foundational problem here. It’s not going to get better, and in fact irreparable harm can be done in this lame-duck term as he continues to make up his own laws as he goes along, and, mark my words, will next meddle in the U.S. Court System with appointments that will forever change the basic interpretation of our Constitution’s role in protecting our rights.

It’s time to impeach; and on behalf of American workers and legal immigrants of all backgrounds, we should vehemently oppose any politician on the left or right who would hesitate in voting for articles of impeachment.

This is big news, and not good news, for the GOP, says WaPo:

She’s the first Republican of any significant national stature to make this call. And she’s the kind of figure who could potentially recruit others to the cause — people who will want to be heard. Palin surely doesn’t carry the kind of weight she once did in the GOP, but she still has a significant tea party following and is highly popular among the conservative base…

[I]t throws a sizable and unpredictable variable into what was already shaping up to be a good election year for Republicans. That same could be said for the Benghazi investigation (though that effort appears to have the support of the American people). The name of the game for the GOP right now is maintaining their edge and trying to win back the Senate. Everything else is noise.

Secondly, it lends credence to Democrats’ argument that Republicans are controlled by the extreme wing of their party. And to the extent that Democrats can make the 2014 election a referendum on the GOP’s conduct in Congress (see: government shutdown), it’s to their benefit.

Buchanan made the same points in arguing against impeachment: “The effect would be to enrage and energize the Democratic base, bring out the African-American vote in force and cause the major media to charge the GOP with a racist scheme to discredit and destroy our first black president.” Rush Limbaugh scoffed for similar reasons back in March. When Republican congressmen have had this question tossed at them during town halls over the past five years, the usual response is that there’s no point impeaching when the Senate is controlled by Democrats. The Senate will vote to acquit, Obama will remain in office, and that’ll be that. It’s silly to put the country through an ordeal where the outcome is foreordained, especially when the political fallout is unpredictable and potentially damaging to the GOP. That argument becomes (slightly) harder to make, though, if Republicans retake the Senate this fall. Impeachment would still be futile: You need two-thirds of the Senate to vote for conviction to remove the president from office, and there’s no way no how no chance the GOP will have anything close to 67 seats in January. But maybe that won’t appease impeachment supporters. If you’ve got a majority, they might say, why not at least try? Even if they fail (and they will), there’ll at least be some moral sanction in reaching a bare majority to convict. It could even be that Obama will feel chastened by the rebuke and act less aggressively in 2015-16. I’m … pretty sure that wouldn’t happen, but that’ll be the argument.

Needless to say, although the prime target here is Obama, the secondary target is Mitch McConnell and the looming Senate Republican majority. I remember writing somewhere last year after the shutdown that impeachment could become the new “defund” effort — doomed to futility but sufficiently pure in intent and supported by a Republican with sufficiently high standing among grassroots conservatives that to oppose it for logistical reasons is to fail an ideological litmus test. Ted Cruz gave “defund” its political rocket fuel, Palin potentially could be providing the rocket fuel to impeachment. If McConnell decides that it’s pointless to try it because they’ll never get 10-15 Democrats to join them in convicting, it’ll be taken by righties as “proof” that squishy Republican majorities are no better than Democratic ones. That’s a useful grievance for a tea-party champion like Cruz to run on in the 2016 primaries, which makes me eager to hear what he thinks of this idea. I’m also eager to see which policies, specifically, Boehner will cite in his separation-of-powers lawsuit against O, as I’m pretty sure he’s not going to follow Palin’s advice and name immigration as Obama’s chief offense. The last thing the GOP establishment wants is to give the media a reason to print “REPUBLICANS SUE TO KEEP ILLEGALS OUT” headlines when Beltway Republicans are desperate to pander to Latinos before 2016. But that’s potentially also useful to a Cruz 2016 campaign: If both Boehner and McConnell refuse to challenge Obama on DACA and other immigration policies, Cruz could position himself as a champion of border enforcement by contrast.

By the way, don’t be so sure there’d be a majority in favor of convicting Obama even if Republicans retake the Senate. The usual centrist suspects — Collins, Murkowski, Kirk, et al. — will be chilly to the idea. And now that Thad Cochran owes his reelection to black Democrats in Mississippi, it’s hard to believe he’d turn around and vote to remove the first black president. To even have a bare majority willing to convict, I suspect you’d need at least 57 or so seats in GOP hands next year, which is a tall order for November. But again, this is mainly about constructing a true conservative/RINO litmus test, so if a bunch of RINOs end up voting to acquit, no biggie. That’ll simply be taken as proof of the underlying point that the Senate needs more tea partiers. Speaking of which, your exit question: Does John McCain agree with his former running mate that the president should be impeached? Inquiring minds want to know!