Biden impeachment inquiry

Kevin McCarthy is trying to walk a fine line between appeasing the most overt lunatics in his caucus, who want to impeach Joe Biden because his son’s laptop something something, and the handful of GOP reps in swing districts who are well aware that voting to impeach Biden in the face of the total lack of evidence of any wrongdoing on his part will be the electoral equivalent of mailing themselves letter bombs:

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Tuesday that the House could move forward with an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden if his administration doesn’t provide documents Republicans are seeking.

During a Fox Business interview Tuesday night, McCarthy, R-Calif., was asked whether he has made up his mind whether to launch an impeachment inquiry into Biden.

“The thing that holds up whether we’ll do an impeachment inquiry: Provide us the documents we’re asking,” he said. “The whole determination here is how the Bidens handle this.”

“If they provide us the documents, there wouldn’t be a need for an impeachment inquiry,” he added. “But if they withhold the documents and fight like they have now to not provide to the American public what they deserve to know, we will move forward with impeachment inquiry when we come back into session.”

McCarthy also raised allegations that he mentioned in an interview last month with Fox News host Sean Hannity. The House speaker told Hannity at the time that allegations stemming from Republican probes into the business dealings of family members of Biden are “rising to the level of impeachment inquiry.”

The allegations include that Biden family members received payments from foreign companies and that the Justice Department, according to IRS whistleblowers, has treated the Biden family “differently” in its investigation into Hunter Biden, he noted.

The structural development here is that the GOP is trying to turn impeachment into an overt farce, given the tendency of its undisputed leader to commit actually impeachable offenses on a weekly if not daily basis.

Check out this veritable masterpiece of bothsiding from Doug Schoen:

Indeed, the last two impeached presidents saw their poll numbers increase immediately after the proceedings. One month before the 1998 midterms, the Republican-controlled House authorized their impeachment inquiry into former President Bill Clinton; in turn, that was the first midterm election in more than six decades where a president’s party gained congressional seats. Clinton’s strongest approval rating — 73 percent — came in December 1998, when the House was taking up the articles of impeachment against him, per Gallup polling. 

In more recent history, former President Donald Trump’s highest-ever approval rating — 47 percent — was recorded in February 2020, just days after the Senate acquitted him in his first impeachment trial, according to NBC News polling. Trump’s approval ticked up even higher among independent voters — to 51 percent — after previously having numbers in the low 30s. 

Not only did impeachment strengthen Trump’s position, it also eroded trust in the government. Nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of Americans — including majorities of both parties — said that their level of trust in political institutions decreased because of Trump’s first impeachment, per FiveThirtyEight. 

While other factors — i.e., strong economies in both 1998 and pre-COVID-2020 — could very well have contributed to Clinton’s and Trump’s rising ratings, it’s also clear that both impeachments, which at the time were viewed as heavily partisan, played a role.  

What we’re seeing here is the breakdown of the sorts of norms that are critical to maintaining a functioning presidential system, slowly at first, and then all at once.