Kevin McCarthy Goes Fishing

Photo by The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Republicans who denounced Trump’s impeachments as political have apparently decided the more the merrier as Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, despite the fact that the numerous investigations in the president have yet to produce any clear wrongdoing.

“There’s a lot of smoke around the Biden family finances,” is the typical rationale for why Republicans should move forward with impeachment. I’ll acknowledge that there is smoke, but as a rationale for an impeachment inquiry, this logic is exactly bass-ackwards.

Take the Trump impeachments for example (please!). While it’s true that some Democrats were screaming to impeach Trump from Day One, the adults in the room did not initiate an impeachment until there was both hard evidence of Trump’s abuse of power as well as strong public support for impeachment.

In fact, Democrats passed up some perfectly good grounds for impeachment, such as Trump’s politically motivated firing of FBI Director James Comey and his abuse of national emergency authority to bypass Congress, and waited until there was hard evidence of an unlawful abuse of power. Some Republicans, such as Lindsey Graham, initially said that if Trump had done what he was accused of with regard to withholding aid to Ukraine for political favors, it would be impeachable. That these Republicans later reversed themselves and voted to acquit (twice in most cases) does not change the underlying fact that there was hard evidence of Trump’s wrongdoing before the Democrats launched into the impeachment process. (I do disagree with how Democrats handled impeachment, making it a partisan issue, but not the reasons for impeachment.)

Not so with the Republicans and Joe Biden. It is also certainly true that Biden has been less than honest and forthcoming about his knowledge of Hunter’s business (and other) activities, and it may be true that Joe has acted corruptly. What is definitely true, however, is that Republicans have not found a smoking gun. How can we know this? Because they’ve told us so.

Last month, I described how Republican congressional hearings that supposedly were to provide evidence of Biden’s corruption fizzled in the House. Within a few days, a House Oversight Committee tweet tacitly admitted that they found no crime or abuse of power by Joe, saying, “No real services were provided other than access to the Biden network, including Joe Biden himself.”

Presumably, if House Republicans had discovered any abuse of power or criminal activity by Joe Biden since August 9, they would have made it public. I’m sure it would have been shouted from the rooftops.

Even in his announcement, McCarthy failed to cite evidence against President Biden, instead saying, “This logical next step will give our committees the full power to gather all the facts and answers for the American public is exactly what we want to know the answers. I believe the president would want to answer these questions and allegations as well.”

Saying that we need an impeachment inquiry to determine if there is evidence for impeachment is the modern Republican equivalent of saying, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.” It was a garbage line of reasoning in 2010 and it’s garbage now.

What we have is a revenge impeachment that is being pushed forward even as House Republicans search for its justification. McCarthy’s impeachment inquiry is a fishing expedition rather than a serious attempt to punish bad behavior.

Let me insert here that if evidence can be found that Biden abused his office as Trump did then I’ll support an impeachment. I stand by the opinions I expressed during the Trump Adminstration that abuse of office doesn’t necessarily have to be criminal to be impeachable. Reasons for impeachment do have to rise beyond the business-as-usual politics and they should have the support of the public, however.

But, in reality, this impeachment inquiry is an attempt by McCarthy to quash a budding revolt against his speakership. It is no accident that McCarthy’s announcement came on the same day that Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) lit into the Speaker on the House floor for reneging on the terms of the agreement that brought him to power after an appalling 15 ballots.

Presenting McCarthy with a list of demands, including impeachment, Gaetz said, “Do these things or face a motion to vacate the chair.”

Among Gaetz’s other complaints was McCarthy’s advocacy for a continuing resolution to avoid yet another government shutdown. The government is scheduled to run out of money on September 30 and Gaetz and his cronies want a series of single-subject bills that they can use to “defund” Donald Trump’s political enemies, among other priorities.

In Gaetz’s words, “A vote for the continuing resolution is a vote to continue the election interference of Jack Smith… [Single-subject bills] would allow us to zero out the salaries of the bureaucrats who have broken bad, targeted President Trump, or cut sweetheart deals for Hunter Biden.”

Gaetz said that he was aware that Republicans might lose the votes that he was pushing for, including the impeachment vote, but McCarthy has not even committed to holding a vote. By opening an impeachment inquiry, McCarthy has only instructed House committees to… wait for it… investigate Joe Biden. The Speaker said as much in his announcement.

The House was already already investigating Joe Biden so what does the impeachment inquiry do? The answer should be obvious. It placates Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who got into a Twitter tiff with each other in their attempts to claim credit for McCarthy’s move. Or at least McCarthy hopes it will placate them.

I will stipulate all this by noting that not all Republicans have gone crazy. There is deep division in the party over the impeachment inquiry. Many Senate Republicans seem skeptical of the move with one calling it a “fool’s errand,” but it isn’t clear that McCarthy can even muster the simple majority needed for an impeachment vote in the closely divided House.

NBC News points to 18 Republicans from vulnerable districts who will decide the fate of impeachment. With Republicans holding a 10-seat majority in the House, the math doesn’t look good for the impeachment advocates.

If the prospects for impeachment look bleak in the House, they look worse on Main Street. In early August, Rasmussen, a right-leaning pollster, put support for “begin[ing] impeachment proceedings” at 38 percent. Compare that to the 50 percent who wanted Trump impeached and 48 percent who favored removal during the 2019 impeachment proceedings, per FiveThirtyEight’s polling averages.

So who does want Biden impeached? The Daily Mail answered that question with another early August poll that found 77 percent of likely Republican caucusgoers in Iowa favored impeachment.

When political leaders lead by following the most radical elements of their base, it rarely yields a positive result. McCarthy has little to gain from his impeachment gambit, other than holding onto his seat for a few more months, but Republicans have a lot to lose.

I pointed out yesterday that Democrats aren’t all that happy with Joe Biden. One sure way to unify the party, however, is to initiate a blatantly political impeachment. Just watch the Democrats who wanted to dump Biden circle the wagons against the threatened impeachment.

I can think of several things that would be worse for Republicans than not trying to impeach Joe Biden. One item that ranks high up the list is trying and failing to impeach Joe Biden. Just imagine if McCarthy can’t garner the support to hold an impeachment vote after opening an inquiry. Or worse, imagine if the House votes not to impeach.

Republicans already have a tendency to assume that they have been betrayed and a failed impeachment effort would not be met with the calm and rational attitude that maybe there was not enough evidence to proceed. No, the Republican base will sharpen its pitchforks and go on the warpath looking for RINO scalps. And Kevin McCarthy will be their first target.

Republicans have spent years looking for dirt on Joe Biden. The impeachment inquiry may spend more years of investigation (if Biden wins reelection and Republicans retain control of the House), but unless they find something that can stick – and shift public opinion – it will amount to nothing more than a public relations stunt to encourage the Republican base. And what are the odds of finding a smoking gun that hasn’t been uncovered during the past six years of repeated investigations? Not zero but not great either.

This isn’t going to end well… for Republicans. Speaker McCarthy is being held hostage by the radical MAGA faction and its delusions of being a silent majority. Republicans have a long, sad habit of happily adopting losing strategies and then expressing shock and dismay when they lose. The push for impeachment (as well as the groundswell of support for a third Trump candidacy) show that they haven’t gotten tired of losing yet. At least not tired enough to jettison the crazies.

More than once in the past few years, we have seen Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans seize defeat from the jaws of victory with bad policy and worse candidates. It looks a lot like 2024 is shaping up to be more of the same.