House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is beginning to plot the impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden, suggesting that the GOP may move forward with an impeachment. It could be one big mistake.
Joe Biden on Impeachment Watch?
The strategy is consistent with the hyper-partisan, hyper-vindictive political atmosphere rhat we currently inhabit; the strategy is to be expected – but not encouraged.
Eventually, one party will need to ‘take the high road’ and break the trend of weaponizing a House majority with an impeachment procedure.
It’s true the Republicans are reciprocating the Democrats’s own Trump-era impeachment protocols. But McCarthy and company have an opportunity to break the trend – an opportunity that it seems McCarthy will forgo.
What is McCarthy up to?
“In recent weeks, McCarthy has privately told Republicans he plans to pursue an impeachment inquiry into Biden and hopes to start the process by the end of September, according to multiple GOP sources familiar with the conversations,” CNN reported. “While McCarthy has already publicly threatened to launch an inquiry if allegations from IRS whistleblowers hold up or if the Biden administration does not cooperate with requests related to House Republicans’ Hunter Biden probe, sources say that McCarthy has sent even stronger signals about his intentions behind closed doors.”
Conservatives, skeptical of the Biden family’s ethics, may be inclined to commend McCarthy’s aggressive maneuvering. But the maneuvering could backfire.
Consider the recent history with President Trump for example. Trump was impeached twice, which helped solidify the Trump-endorsed narrative that The Establishment was out to get him. More recently, Trump has been indicted – on four separate occasions. Each indictment seems to result in a fundraising bump, a popularity bump, further solidifying the prospect that Trump will be the 2024 GOP nominee. Would Biden benefit similarly from something like an impeachment?
Potential Biden Response
Biden can’t claim that he’s an outsider and that The Establishment is actively working to mitigate his influence. Biden has been a DC insider for fifty years. He is The Establishment. An impeachment won’t change that perception, nor would Joe Biden use an impeachment to change that perception.
Instead, Biden would use an impeachment to reinforce a narrative he and the Democrats have been carefully crafting for years, a narrative that is central to Biden’s reelection efforts: the Republicans have gone radical, and the Republicans are trying to hijack our democratic government.
If McCarthy does proceed with an impeachment, Biden will leverage the impeachment to lend credibility to his radical-Republican-takeover narrative. And given that the Republicans have so far failed to reveal tangible evidence regarding Biden family wrongdoing, Biden shouldn’t have a difficult time making the case that the impeachment is about politics and about the election – not about national security or ethics or the Constitution.
Because the Republicans don’t have anything on Biden at the moment. Not really.
They have suggestions of wrongdoing – Hunter Biden on the board of Burisma, Devon Archer’s vague testimony about Joe Biden on the speaker phone. Okay, fine. And? That’s not actionable intelligence. So, unless the House Oversight Committee, or McCarthy, knows something they’re not disclosing, then they don’t have anything worthy of initiating an impeachment over.
Biden will snatch a flimsy impeachment attempt and use it as ammunition in the Democrat’s grand theme of Republican radicalism and the Republican threat to democracy.
Harrison Kass is the Senior Editor and opinion writer at 19FortyFive. An attorney, pilot, guitarist, and minor pro hockey player, Harrison joined the US Air Force as a Pilot Trainee but was medically discharged. Harrison holds a BA from Lake Forest College, a JD from the University of Oregon, and an MA from New York University. Harrison listens to Dokken.
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