House GOP Not Waiting Around For Woke 'Evidence' To Start Impeaching Biden
They're terrible at everything.
Republican House Speaker Puppet Kevin McCarthy is throwing a Joe Biden sham impeachment party. He’s ordered the food. He’s got those annoying noise maker things. He just needs some evidence, and if he can’t find any at this late hour, maybe he can double up on the noise makers.
CNN Capitol Hill reporter Melanie Zanona writes, “McCarthy, under pressure from the Right, has told Republicans he’s serious about a Biden impeachment inquiry and wants to start in September.”
That spineless coward is always under pressure. That song has played so often, McCarthy can easily distinguish the “significant” difference between the Bowie/Queen version and Vanilla Ice’s knockoff.
Zanona notes that McCarthy doesn’t have the votes for an impeachment inquiry, which isn’t a shock because McCarthy rarely has the votes to wipe his own nose. He’s just not very good at this. However, McCarthy and his fellow idiots have discussed whether they should even bother holding an embarrassing floor vote to approve an inquiry. They could just sort of move forward with their obviously political hit job. The Constitution is wacky because it seems to only have actual hard rules that apply to Democrats.
Skipping the formal vote, which would be a tough one for many of the party’s more vulnerable and moderate members, would allow Republicans to get the ball rolling on an inquiry while giving leadership more time to convince the rest of the conference to get on board with impeachment.
It’s kind of Zanona to consider the political complications for “vulnerable” faux-moderate Republicans in districts Joe Biden won. Why, they have no choice but to tacitly support railroading the president for the party’s immediate political gain.
“I don’t believe that a vote of the House is required to open an impeachment inquiry,” insisted Rep. Matt Gaetz, known constitutional scholar and unsuccessful used car salesman.
Of course, House Democrats held a formal vote before proceeding with Donald Trump’s first annual impeachment in 2019. There was more consideration of process during Trump’s second annual impeachment after January 6. But Democrats were lucky. They had evidence — so much! — of actual wrongdoing.
One House Republican, who wished to remain anonymous because he was daring to speak the truth, told CNN, “There’s no evidence that Joe Biden got money, or that Joe Biden, you know, agreed to do something so that Hunter could get money. There’s just no evidence of that. And they can’t impeach without that evidence. And I don’t think the evidence exists.”
Yet when McCarthy reports to his bosses at Fox News, he insists that Republicans “find new information every week.” That information isn’t “evidence,” though. It’s more like random gossip from foreign agents. However, former president and future felon Donald Trump demands an immediate Biden impeachment, evidence be damned. He ranted on Truth Social Sunday:
The Republicans in Congress, though well meaning, keep talking about an Impeachment “Inquiry” on Crooked Joe Biden. Look, the guy got bribed, he paid people off, and he wouldn’t give One Billion Dollars to Ukraine unless they “got rid of the Prosecutor.” Biden is a Stone Cold Crook-You don’t need a long INQUIRY to prove it, it’s already proven. These lowlifes Impeached me TWICE (I WON!), and Indicted me FOUR TIMES – For NOTHING! Either IMPEACH the BUM, or fade into OBLIVION. THEY DID IT TO US!
Who’s us, Mr. 91 Counts? It was your crooked ass that was impeached … twice.
Trump also lied about not having an impeachment inquiry, just an impeachment with no foreplay or cuddling afterward. But while 2019 was pre-pandemic, we still have newspaper archives.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene shouted on Xitter this weekend, “We MUST vote on impeachment inquiry as soon as we get back in session mid September. There are no excuses to wait.”
One small, relevant excuse is that Congress has serious business in September, such as avoiding another government shutdown, but McCarthy might have to rush through an impeachment inquiry just to wrangle the Republican votes necessary to keep the government running.
This is some sad shit.
[CNN]
Follow Stephen Robinson on Bluesky and Threads.
Subscribe to his YouTube channel for more fun content.
Catch SER on his podcast, The Play Typer Guy.
I wish the media would stop framing it as "under pressure from the Right" to make it look like McCarthy and his "moderates" are well-meaning legislators who gosh-darnit, are being forced into this madness by their caucus's extremists. This helps Republicans promote some dichotomy where sane people can feel free to vote for "moderates" who are sane people themselves, while the "extremists" are safely ensconced in deep red districts and can let their freak flag fly. It absolves the "moderates" of responsibility, even though THEY HAVE THE POWER TO PUT THE EXTREMISTS IN THEIR PLACE. It'd take what, five moderate votes to say "Kevin, you tell the Freedom Caucus to fuck right off with this shit now, or we call a vote on your Speakership and end this now".
But so long as the "moderates" feel safely protected by this framing of them as poor souls pushed around by their own party's nutjobs, they have no reason to put their power to the test.
What fascinates me about this is it was generally accepted that you had to have republicans on the January 6th committee to give them legitimacy. Otherwise, what we all saw with our own eyes on live television was a “partisan witch hunt” against Donald Trump.
But when republicans want to investigate Democrats, no such qualifier exists. They can run any partisan witch hunt they want and no Democrats are needed to give it legitimacy. No one questions it. It becomes their prerogative to do whatever they please.
Funny that.