Texas Republican Rep. Bill Flores thinks that "a fair number of people" in the House of Representatives would be willing to vote to impeach President Obama, but that such a vote would be meaningless because it would fail in the Senate and hurt House Republicans politically.
"If you were to ask many folks in the House is the president violated the law and will he be worthy of impeachment, I think a fair number of people would say yes," Flores said in a telephone town hall on July 30. "Well then you say, 'OK, what do you do?' Well, then you turn back to the Constitution. You look at Article 1, Section 2, Clause 5 and there is says the House of Representatives will have the sole power of impeachment. You say okay, so, what happens then?"
Flores said the process of two-thirds of the Senate having to vote at a trial to impeach the president in order to remove the president from office would most likely fail.
"I think all of use would agree there's no way you get two-thirds of the Senate," Flores said.
"So what would happen if you did that and you failed? Well, first of all you haven't accomplished anything because you're not gonna change the president's behavior if he hasn't been convicted," Flores said. "In all likelihood the media would side with the president and would help him turn his situation around just like the situation that happened with Bill Clinton back in the '90s."
Flores then concludes such an exercise would hurt the Congress because of the low chance of success in the Senate.
"I think it would hurt the Congress to engage in that type of activity unless you have a high likelihood you're gonna be successful," he said. "I think in this case it's pretty obvious we can't be."