The GOP believes it has a problem: President Obama calculates that it helps him and hurts Republicans to claim, falsely, that Republicans are about to impeach him, so that is what Democrats are doing. As I argued before — and it sounds as if Bill Kristolagrees — this is a foolish calculation on their part. To be clear, neither Bill, I, nor most Obama critics, nor any elected Republicans that I know of, are calling for the president’s impeachment at this point: The public case has not been made for it, and defeat would be certain in the Senate.

Yet even if you assume, as the Republican establishment appears bent on doing, that Obama is right and that his knowingly false alarm about imminent impeachment is bad for Republicans, the solution is simple: Just make it very clear that there is no plan to file articles of impeachment against Obama — not now, and not in the foreseeable future. It is already clear that that is the case to sensible people, and after a short while it will be clear to everyone — the Democrats’ cynicism will be seen for what it is.

But no, the GOP can’t leave it at that. For whatever reason they feel compelled to say not only that they will not impeach Obama but that Obama’s systematic refusal to execute the laws faithfully does not rise to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” the Constitution’s impeachment standard.