Michigan Republican Rep. Kerry Bentivolio said Monday it would be a “dream come true” to submit a bill to impeach President Obama. Bentivolio also said he had meetings with lawyers asking them to “tell me how I can impeach” the President of the United States. Bentivolio was speaking at the August 2013 Birmingham Bloomfield Republican Club Meeting. “If I could write that bill and submit it, it would be a dream come true,” Bentivolio said.

“Until we have evidence, you’re going to become a laughing stock if you’ve submitted the bill to impeach the president because number one you’ve got to convince the press,” he said.

Meet Congressman Kerry Bentivolio, a Republican lunatic from Michigan:Bentivolio acknowledged that there was one little thing standing in between him and his hopes and dreams: Evidence of an impeachable offense. But his explanation for why that was a problem was, shall we say, unique.So, according to Bentivolio, the reason you need evidence to impeach the president has nothing to do with the fact that you should have evidence to impeach the president ... it's just that if you impeach the president without having evidence, then the press will turn you into a laughingstock. Aside from the fact that Bentivolio doesn't seem to understand that he already is a laughingstock, why is it that he should care about what the press says about him? Isn't it cowardly of him to let fear of mockery dictate what he does and doesn't do?

On a serious note, there is a real similarity here between Bentivolio's excuse for not impeaching Obama and Ted Cruz's excuse: Both of them blame their political circumstance. Bentivolio says he's not impeaching Obama because he's afraid of mockery from the press; Cruz says he's not pushing for impeachment because Republicans wouldn't win the impeachment trial. At least Bentivolio utters the word "evidence," but neither of them have the guts to tell their constituents that the real reason Republicans aren't impeaching President Obama is that President Obama hasn't committed an impeachable offense, or anything close to it. I'm pretty sure both of them understand this, but the fact that even these are guys are too scared of their base to tell them the truth is a pretty good example of just how dysfunctional things have gotten within the GOP.