WASHINGTON (FinalCall.com) – Widespread public repudiation of George W. Bush’s presidency is spreading throughout the country. In addition to a roster of high-ranking retired military commanders who have called for the ouster of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a Los Angeles newspaper has called for the removal of Vice President Dick Cheney as well.

“The remaking of the president in the public eye likely will require more than last week’s game of musical chairs,” the Los Angeles Times wrote in an editorial Apr. 23 after the resignation of Press Secretary Scott McClellan and the reassignment of presidential confidant Karl Rove. “Throwing Cheney overboard would be an implicit repudiation of the excessively hawkish foreign policy with which the vice president, even more than Rumsfeld, has been associated,” the paper said.

On the grassroots level, citizens and municipal governments have gone even further, emerging as a national movement calling for Pres. Bush’s impeachment. City councils, including San Francisco, boards of supervisors, and local and state level Democrat central committees have voted for impeachment. The New Mexico State Democrat party convention rallied in late March for the “impeachment of George Bush and his lawful removal from office.” A late March poll by American Research Group reported that 42 percent of the population favors Pres. Bush’s impeachment.

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House Resolution 635, which would create a Select Committee to look into grounds for recommending Pres. Bush’s impeachment, has nearly three dozen co-sponsors. Popular sentiment appears strong, but official action on Capitol Hill is going nowhere.

In the U.S. Senate, Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) introduced a measure to censure the President for authorizing secret, warrant-less, domestic spy operations against people in this country. But censure is just a “half step” from removing him from office, which carries no penalty according to one author.

Pres. Bush’s secret surveillance is “worse than anything that President Nixon did,” John Nichols, Washington Correspondent for The Nation magazine, said recently in a broadcast interview. He is a co-author with Robert McChesney of the book, “Tragedy & Farce: How American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections and Destroy Democracy.”

But Democrats appear timid on the subject. Many after all, including several prominent Congressional Black Caucus members, voted in favor of the Iraq war in the first place. “Those of us who cover Congress were amazed,” Mr. Nichols continued. “People like John Kerry, Hilary Clinton just clammed up, refused to comment. Those who did comment among Democrats, folks like Joseph Lieberman, actually took the side of the Republicans and were quite rejectionist,” he said.

“Most of the Democrats are playing a petty political game. They believe that President Bush is weak politically. They look at the polls and see his approval rating falling to 33 percent. They believe the Republican Congress is currently held in very low esteem, so they don’t want to rock the boat,” he opined. “They want to have a very quiet march to the November election, which they hope the American people, out of disgust with a corrupt Congress and an inept president, will give them power,” putting Democrats back in control of the House and Senate.

“It is an incredibly irresponsible game to be playing,” however, said Mr. Nichols. “They have all sworn oaths of office to uphold the Constitution, and their failure to do that for political reasons is reprehensible.”

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