Goodness knows, there’s no other governmentin’ that really needs to be done right now.
…
But it’s unclear whether any formal resolution would have the votes to pass. Republicans hold a narrow majority in the House and he can only afford to lose four votes on a measure that is not expected to get any support from Democrats. Several politically vulnerable moderate Republicans, like Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., have been skeptical of an impeachment inquiry.
Buck said this weekend on MSNBC that while the House committees are surfacing information about Biden’s son Hunter, it is clear that impeachment cannot get through the Senate.
…
House Republicans haven’t uncovered any evidence of any wrongdoing by President Biden. Some are alleging corruption around his son Hunter’ business dealings when Biden was vice president. But House committee chairmen who are pushing impeachment haven’t produced any evidence that the president received any financial benefit.
…
IOW political theater, distraction, and appeasing the extreme right wingers.
As I said in the Hunter thread, I wouldn’t be surprised if they actually impeach Biden over something completely stupid and baseless, because they know there’s a non-zero number of voters who will conclude that he must have done something wrong to be impeached, and therefore is every bit as corrupt as Trump.
This is like rabbit starvation for Republicans - they just want to eat red meat and nothing else of substance, and may suffer consequences at the ballot. And yes, this is only to notch an impeachment inquiry against Biden to even-up the score some with what Trump has.
Not necessarily. This could very well backfire on them. The end result might be that people are more careful before launching an impeachment. We will see.
Fostering this sentiment is exactly why Republicans are doing this.
Trump was impeached for very good reason. He absolutely deserved impeachment (and frankly conviction by the senate too). Especially after 1/6.
But Republicans can’t admit that Trump crossed the line or even behaved unusually at all. So what they can do is delegitimize the concept of impeachment by spuriously impeaching every Democrat. When everyone is impeached, nobody is.
If that opposing party is the Democrats and it’s for [waves hands] whatever it is that Biden is being impeached for, I might actually start voting third party.
There was never an actual impeachment inquiry against Bush, and he lied us into war. Trump did seriously impeachable stuff, and has been indicted for some of those same actions in a criminal court.
I’d like to think the Dems won’t go down that path.
Shit, they couldn’t impeach PAB, and the whole fucking world saw his crimes in real time! Their “evidence” is going to be laughably pathetic. I hope they introduce the legendary (corrupted) laptop. And have the blind guy testify. As a wise man once said, “let the baby have his bottle”.
Trump shocked the Republican Party by getting ahead of all his rivals, getting the nomination, and actually winning. In 2020 while he lost, he still made a (distressingly) strong showing and got a historic number of votes, just not as much as Biden did. Republicans were learning the lesson that MAGA works. So in the midterms, you saw a lot of MAGA candidates. And they failed big time, because they didn’t see the whole formula, which is:
MAGA+Trump=Votes
MAGA-Trump=Epic Fail
They are populists and they’ll go whichever way the wind blows. If this blows up in their face, I absolutely think they’ll avoid that tactic in the future.
From last month and also posted in the MTG thread:
White House spokesman Ian Sams accused McCarthy of caving in to the far right with a “baseless, evidence-free impeachment stunt.”
McCarthy would need nearly all Republicans to back impeachment under his thin majority… But McCarthy can lose no more than four GOP votes before the effort collapses — he’s unlikely to win over any Democrats.
The make-or-break votes will come from 18 politically vulnerable Republicans who represent districts Biden won in 2020 and other self-styled GOP pragmatists. And that may be difficult.
I guess if McCarthy tries to push a vote, and then loses, he can proclaim he tried but RINOs stood in his way. I don’t see that he really has much to lose doing this, at least in the public perception.
I may be wrong on this, but I thought all the accusations of Joe’s corruption were from when he was VP, not his current job as President. So they are going to try to fire him from his current job for something he did at a previous job? Is that even a thing? Could you impeach a judge for having an improper relationship when they were a clerk at a law firm 10 years ago?