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.
people: “Impeaching Trump based on We Think He’s A Big Meanie With A Big Dumb Fat Face That Smells Stupid will just turn impeachment into a vote-of-no-confidence move, it won’t be useful as a tool for the checks and balances that supposedly make American governance work”
Democrats: “No we can really do this, we can really make this happen, we have genuine incontrovertible evidence of wrongdoing, this is definitely going to result in removing TrumWE HATES IT! WE HATES IT FOREVER! Excuse me, we mean, this is not going to result in impeachment becoming just something that happens for every President and means nothing!”
(impeachment becomes a vote-of-no-confidence move that just happens for every President and means nothing.)
Democrats: “Clearly this is all Republicans’ fault.”Report
The third impeachment had merit, though!Report
So you don’t think he deserved either of his impeachments? That he did nothing wrong?
Fascinating.Report
They came at the king, and they missed, and now nobody’s ever going to take impeachment seriously again.
Was that worth it? Was it worth it, to have a formal declaration that Some Congress Members Don’t Like Donald Trump? Was it worth destroying the power of impeachment just to get that plusgood bellyfeel?Report
Donald trump committed high crimes and misdemeanors while in office. He has subsequently been indicted for many for them. That Republicans circled the wagons doesn’t mean it was the wrong thing to do.
I mean if you want to get all mad about who cheapened the process, go back to Republicans who used it disastrously to go after Bill Clinton for a peccadillo.Report
Clinton was disbarred!
It cost his wife the 2016 election!Report
“if you want to get all mad about who cheapened the process…”
wait i’m confused
is impeachment a meaningful and relevant thing and so it really matters that they did it to Donald Trump twice
or is it a useless gesture that we shouldn’t pay any mind to because they did it to Clinton in 1998Report
I believe it’s meaningful and relevant. I believe any cheapening has been at the hand of the GOP who seem to choose cases against Democrats on hurt feelings not hard evidence.Report
I mean you had Nancy Pelosi saying “don’t do this” and she is Number One in the Hates Rich White Men club….Report
I don’t see any upside to the GOP for doing this, and I didn’t think there was any upside to the Democrats doing it in Trump impeachment 1. Trump impeachment 2 obviously had to happen.Report
The upside to the GOP is inside the GOP – this distracts their base from the forthcoming trials of TFG, and allows the GOP to keep a perception of power. It also allows Kevin McCarthy to keep his coveted gavel, which is more important to him then anything.Report
That’s fair, and is certainly part and parcel with the Republicans’ drift away from interest in any sort of policy making wins.Report
They can’t have policy making wins because their stated policies are unpopular, even with their own base. close to 70% of the electorate wants abortion in the first trimester, and you have Freedom caucus members floating national bans. And on and on.
So the GOP has to consolidate power in some fashion permanently, and feeding these cakes to the crowds as they starve seems to be the way they want to do it.Report
Electorally the GOP has far less here than they even had on Clinton in the 90’s and the public punished them sharply for impeaching Clinton in the following elections.Report
Yea, it’s another symptom of how the Republicans have just ceased to be a political party in the traditional sense of creating a coalition based on issues, trying to win elections, and advance policy goals.Report
Indeed, it’ll be odd and interesting to see how long it can go on like this or, alternately, if the Dems degrade into a similar state.Report
My concerns about our team are less loss of desire to govern and more perpetual neutering due to inability to coalesce around clear priorities and control against ongoing self inflicted culture war wounds right wing media is only too happy to inflate. The D gerontocracy has been able to navigate those tensions reasonably well but I fear for the next generation.Report
In normal circumstances I would be entirely sanguine about the matter and would say “Whelp, the kids will figure it out or else the political wilderness will figure it out for them.” but, man, the GOP really doesn’t look like it’s in any state to hold down the fort for a cycle.
But I remain optimistic. Joe wasn’t the only moderate in the race. Amy or Pete were relatively fine over all.
To be slightly uncharitable- I don’t think our gerentocratic leadership is quite as indispensable as they find it convenient to claim.Report
Hey I’ll take a shot of that optimism and make it a double! There are definitely plausible, serious Democratic leaders that are up and coming, and the old people are certainly becoming less inspired by the day.
If I had to pinpoint the root of the fear it’s the damage the GOP’s plunge does to the two party system as a whole. It certainly hurts the Republicans more than it hurts the Democrats but it hurts them nonetheless by distorting incentives and perceptions of what is and isn’t important. The Republicans are in a deep, deep abyss due to Trump, but we are worse for the experience as well.Report
On that we are both in agreement. Having been raised in Canada originally, I recall the conservative party there plunging into an abyss when the liberals under Cretchein did a Clinton style co-opting of several of their ideas. In the 90’s and Aughts there were simply alternative parties to fill in for the Conservatives while they flopped around and rediscovered themselves. In the American duopoly there just… isn’t. It’s an older and, in some ways, cruder system.Report
I’ve said for year that the GOP missed a huge opportunity by not taking a victory lap after the ACA was passed what with all the Heritage Foundation Ideas in there. Of course by then it was already clear they didn’t really want to govern.Report
The Heritage Foundation supported state-based insurance exchanges, not federal-based. To a federalist, the difference between 50 laboratories that Americans can relocate to and a national policy is huge, both in theory and in practice. Heritage had also endorsed individual mandates at times, but it was a debated position (as most things are in think tanks). Neither idea originated at Heritage.Report
Concurrence:
T-Imp 1 bears similarity to B-Imp 1 in that they are/were fishing expeditions on things that seem like they should be true based on scant but salacious material.
T-Imp 2 was justified on [narrow] grounds that Exec Branch incited Riot against Legislative Branch.
Read some conservative inside baseball stuff a couple weeks ago on possible impeachment and their take was that the investigation is peeling back some leads to follow, but premature to impeach. Ironically they gave McCarthy high marks for restraint. The loons forcing McCarthy’s hand is par for the course.
For full disclosure, my trending opinion is that the influence peddling by Hunter (and his Uncle as a family business) was indeed ‘supported’ by Joe. My hunch (hope?) was that the quid-pro-quo never quite materialized because the goal was the retainer(s), not the pay-off. The illusion of influence was valuable in itself. Now, a little favor here or there to keep the sparkle on the illusion? What’s a quick passport renewal or an H1B going to the top of the line (for example) in the grand scheme of things? Feels very old-school like Joe. Letter of the law with low security plausible deniability approach. Nothing fancy like a Global Foundation. Impeachable? Not without an actual quid-pro-quo … this is the level of corruption we want: petty personal enrichment for small personal favors.Report
Frankly if we are goin to impeach for that then Democrats would have done well to go after Trump for Jared and Ivanka’s actions while actual White House Advisors – which Hunter is not. I also don’t see the Trump DoJ ever prosecuting any Trump kid for anything, while the DoJ under Biden is in fact trying Hunter.Report
Yeah, it’s just a mystery how Politicians make it to DC as middle class lawyers and end up millionaires. That Millionaires get to DC and parlay that into Billions is another mystery.
Like there’s an entire side business of, what would we call it?Report
How many billionaire ex-congresscritters are there? Or, if not numbers, some names.Report
Heh, is this like shoplifting? You’re only interested above a certain threshold? My point is that everyone selling influence / trading information should be prosecuted. Start wherever you want.Report
If that’s your point, make it. Don’t make other stuff up.Report
It’s Philip’s assertion that’s been previously made here that Jared traded influence for $Billions. I connected the dots that he’s referring to the Saudi dealings we’ve discussed.
I’m *agreeing* that it’s plausible that Jared (who’s already very rich) traded influence for $B because we know that relatively less rich members of congress will trade influence for $M.
Could you not follow that?Report
I’m sorry, I was reading your actual words from the comment I was responding to. Silly me.Report
Here’s a list of richest American politicians.
Looks like the billionaires lump up around presidential candidates and the Legislative branch merely has centimillionaires.Report
Yep, and most of them got rich either before they became politicians or after they left office.Report
Yea, one of the ongoing errors of opposition to Trump was failing to distinguish between the truly material and the splitting of hairs. Which isn’t to say the hairsplitting stuff is right on its own merits, but it’s always so convoluted and legalistic that the juice just isn’t worth the squeeze. Everyone knows that’s the case and so everyone gets away with it. I’ve always said if you can’t explain it in one concise, shocking sentence (like ‘[he] incited a riot against the Legislative branch’) it isn’t worth impeachment.
There are aspects of Trump I-1 that reminded me of the Republican approach to Bill Clinton, which as North mentioned ultimately backfired. Now Trump is no Clinton in terms of political skills nor were we in a time of unprecedented peace and prosperity so he didn’t survive anyway but I always had this feeling it was helping Trump a lot more than hurting him.Report
Trump I-1: He should be impeached because he tried to tank the election by attempting to bribe a foreign president to lie about his opponent.
Trump I-2: He should be impeached because he incited a riot against the Legislative Branch to stop the election of that opponent.
They both seem worth the squeeze to me, even if the GOP Senate disagreed.Report
Everything alleged in Trump’s first impeachment not only happened but the fact it happened was pretty obvious and not all in dispute by the time impeachment started. Call that what you will, even think it wasn’t impeachable, but it wasn’t a fishing expedition….Trump really did illegally hold up foreign aid because he was trying to get a political favor.
Likewise, in a technical sense, the Bill Clinton impeachment was not a fishing expedition…it was the _end result_ of a fishing expedition that had basically searched everything he had every done and managed to find an affair he lied about, but the _impeachment_ didn’t start until that was known.
Democrats did not think the first was impeachable, and the public agrees. Republicans did not think the second was impeachable, and…the public mostly agreed at the time, although that entire thing has been memory-holed with the extremely blatant illegality that prompted the _second_ impeachment of them.
What happened this week is the first time we’ve had someone say ‘We are going to impeach the president without there being an obvious crime that either the legal system has found (Clinton) or the president openly confessed to (Trump 1) or just did in front of everyone (Trump 2)’Report
You know, you’re right. I’ve elided Russia/Mueller/Obstruction/Ukraine/Obstruction/Impeachment in my head. So many attempts.
The parallel follows more of a Steele Dossier / Hunter Dossier / Special Counsel / Impeachment for anything that looks plausible model. My mistake.Report
“Trump really did illegally hold up foreign aid because he was trying to get a political favor.”
Only if you interpret the conversation in a certain way.
“What happened this week is the first time we’ve had someone say ‘We are going to impeach the president…'”
Nope.Report
Yes, because the conversation is the only evidence we have of that and not the actual holding up of the aid for literally no reason or justification, even after the rest of the government said to release it.
‘What if a guy commits a very obvious crime but we only have evidence that _might_ be him confessing to it?’Report
This sounds mostly like wish casting for what you want to be true rather than reality. It seems a lot more plausible that Hunter was defrauding shady dudes with the implications that he had influence in order to fund an epic hookers and blow bender.Report
Never interfere with the enemy when he is in the process of destroying himself.Report
My problem here is that I don’t see indication of Biden’s corruption as president. VP doesn’t do it for me.Report