Jackie Calmes
House Republicans plan to flee the Capitol this week for the holidays after almost 12 months in power. And flee they should: If they had any shame, they would be feeling plenty of it after the year they’ve had.
They’ve done nothing when it comes to the two issues that helped them win a slim majority in the 2022 midterm elections: crime and inflation. What they have done is prevent Congress from funding the government for the full fiscal year that began Oct. 1. They threatened a default on the U.S. debt in the spring and two government shutdowns in the fall. Now they’re threatening Ukraine’s very existence by blocking U.S. aid, a stalemate that brought President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Washington, hat in hand, for some futile diplomacy.
Amid these failures, the House Republicans have made U.S. history. They took four days and 15 ballots to elect a speaker in January, then ousted that “leader” — a House first — in October, and fought for weeks, paralyzing Congress before finally electing a new speaker.
And what have they chosen for a final act, the capstone on what is shaping up as one of the least productive Congresses in memory? Perhaps something to better the lives of their constituents?
Heavens, no.
The Republicans voted to begin an impeachment inquiry aimed at President Biden, with the requisite “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” still to be determined. Trying to fill in the blanks will give them plenty to do in 2024, never mind the actual business of governing.
House members come and go, but the Biden impeachment effort is brought to you by much the same gang that already made punchlines of a string of so-called Democratic scandals — think Benghazi, Solyndra, Fast and Furious. I won’t bother recalling the details. Surely you remember them, given that the Republicans described each “scandal” in its time as “worse than Watergate.”
We might call the Biden impeachment inquiry a fishing expedition, but that’s been long underway. Even before they won their majority, Republicans were trying to implicate Biden — somehow — for the lobbying sins of his long-troubled son Hunter.
No less than Peter Doocy, the White House correspondent for Faux News who often verbally jousts with the president, told his audience this week, “the House Oversight Committee has been at this for years, and they have so far not been able to provide any concrete evidence that Joe Biden personally profited from his son Hunter’s overseas business.”
Back in September the former speaker, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, as part of his unsuccessful bid to appease his right wing and save his job, ordered several House committees to look into impeaching Biden, though they were already doing that to little avail. (The announcement was simply semantics.) Now it’s McCarthy’s successor, Speaker “MAGA Mike” Johnson of Louisiana, who called for the vote that would make an inquiry all official-like, and enhance the House’s power to enforce subpoenas.
That focus on subpoena power is especially rich. Recall that a number of these House members, including McCarthy and Biden antagonist Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, defied subpoenas from the House Jan. 6 committee, which sought their firsthand accounts of Trump’s activities on and before that day.
Why vote now for an impeachment inquiry? Because party leaders finally had enough Republican votes to authorize it. As one of the balky moderates, Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, told Punchbowl News this week, “I can defend an inquiry. I can’t defend impeachment right now.”
Yet articles of impeachment can’t be far behind. By putting a formal label on the whole matter, the Republicans all but commit themselves to coming up with charges, however specious. Can you imagine them simply closing up the investigatory shop without an impeachment vote in election year 2024, thereby enraging their likely presidential nominee, Donald Trump, along with the party’s MAGA base?
As Trump warned on his social media site in August, “Either IMPEACH the BUM, or fade into OBLIVION.”
Should the House indeed impeach Biden, the Senate then would have to conduct a trial — amid the presidential campaign. That, of course, is the real point: Weaken Biden and create a political parallel to Trump’s criminal trials.
Some Republicans in the Senate, who’d serve on the Biden jury in the event of an impeachment trial, are skeptical. “I don’t see the grounds for this yet,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, a member of the Republican leadership.
Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota plainly agrees. If they can’t make a much stronger case than they have so far, he said, they’ll be seen “as crying wolf.” Indeed.
“Impeachment used to be taken pretty seriously,” said Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski. Like back in early 2021, when she took Trump’s impeachment for inciting an insurrection seriously enough to be one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict him.
House Republicans, however, are not serious people doing serious business for the nation. If they were, they might have some actual achievements to boast about as this year draws to an end. As one of their own recently bellowed from the House floor: “Give me one thing — one! — that I can go campaign on.”
He’s still waiting.
Jackie Calmes is an opinion columnist for the Los Angeles Times in Washington, D.C.
