Republicans Counter Two Trump Impeachments See Mayorkas
with Unambitious Impeachment Threats
Capitol Inside
November 25, 2022
President Joe Biden dodged a wave that he feared on Thursday when no one spilled the cranberry sauce at the Thanksgiving table. But Biden had to feel a significant debt of gratitude for the enemy when U.S. House minority leader Kevin McCarthy vowed this week to make the impeachment of a little-known underling the first major order of business when the GOP takes control of the chamber in 2023.
With a handful of Texas congressional Republicans nodding approvingly at a photo op in El Paso, McCarthy announced that the GOP's new majority would impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in protest of Biden's immigration policies in instead of taking aim at the president himself.
The future House speaker's words of war show a shocking disconnect with the American electorate based on the 2022 midterm election when the House majority was a consolation prize for the Republicans when the tsunami their pollsters had imagine failed to show. The Democrats flipped the governor's office in two states and could be poised for a net-gain of one seat in the U.S. Senate with a victory in a special election in Georgia on January 5.
McCarthy and his GOP allies in the House have somehow interpreted the party high expectations crash as a mandate from conservatives who would savor the thought of impeaching of Mayorkas and the entire Biden administration if time would permit in the next two years
But the hard right has to be wondering now if an unelected appointee who none of the Republicans in Congress had even heard of two years ago is really the best that the new House majority can really do. The House Republicans failed to learn anything from the Democrats who impeached Donald Trump twice in four years based on specific offenses.
McCarthy and his allies in the House have lowered their sights dramatically with their plans to impeach a cabinet official who's simply carring out the bosses order with a name that doesn't ring bell with the lion's share of voters on both sides of the aisle and in between.
McCarthy and the Republicans chastised the Democrats' impeachment proceedings for Trump as a vendetta that represented a massive abuse of power. The Republicans watched in sheepish silence as Trump tried to hold on to his power by overturning the 2020 election before the insurrection that he orchestrated at the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to block the certification of the results in Congress on January 6.
Now McCarthy and the new majority are going to get revenge for Trump by going after a Biden subordinate when they could have focused their wrath on the American commander-in-chief who's been calling the shots on the Rio Grande.
The Republicans may not comprehend why Biden was laughing at them this week as the brunt of turkey day jokes. McCarthy and his band of future Biden agenda wreckers set themselves up for mockery - however - with the targeting of a cabinet member as opposed to a president who's a household word.
The U.S. House Republicans have given the appearance that they're afraid to mess with Biden in the wake of the Democrats' unforeseen victory in the general election this month. So they've found someone who's much weaker to pick on now.
But McCarthy and the Republicans ran the risk of making themselves look even less astute with their candid admission that they have no actual reason to impeach Mayorkas and will have to investigate for a while to come up with something on him beyond petty partisan spite. |
