Republicans soft-pedal talk of impeaching Biden
WASHINGTON — Since the day President Joe Biden took office, Republicans have publicly called for his impeachment, introducing more than 12 resolutions accusing him and his top officials of high crimes and misdemeanors and running campaign ads and fundraising appeals vowing to remove him from office at the first opportunity.
But in the homestretch of a campaign that has brought the party close to winning control of Congress, top Republicans are seeking to downplay the chances that they will impeach Biden, distancing themselves from an issue that could alienate voters just as polls show the midterm elections breaking their way.
“I think the country doesn’t like impeachment used for political purposes at all,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., told Punchbowl News this month.
Although he didn’t rule out moving forward on impeachment hearings if something rose “to that occasion,” McCarthy said the country needed to “heal” and voters wanted to “start to see the system that actually works.”
Still, should he become House speaker, McCarthy would be under immense pressure from hard-right members of his rank-and-file and core Republican voters who swept his party into the majority in part based on promises to take down Biden to impeach. The pressure will only increase if former President Donald Trump adds his voice to those pushing for the move.
It is just one of a series of confounding issues McCarthy would face as House speaker, testing his grip on power and bearing heavy consequences for Biden and the country.
“There have already been impeachment articles and I expect you’ll get more of that in the next Congress,” said former Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va. “There’s certainly going to be pressure for this to go.”
Some influential Republicans have been moving aggressively toward impeachment for years, demanding punishment for Biden and his administration as well as vengeance for Democrats’ two impeachments of Trump.
“Joe Biden is guilty of committing high crimes and misdemeanors,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., wrote in a recent fundraising email. “It’s time for Congress to IMPEACH, CONVICT, and REMOVE Biden from office.”
Greene has already introduced five articles of impeachment against Biden, including one the day he took office, when she accused him of abusing his power while serving as vice president to benefit his son Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine.
Privately, many Republican lawmakers and staff members concede that there does not appear to be any clear-cut case of high crimes and misdemeanors by Biden or members of his Cabinet that would meet the bar for impeachment.
But McCarthy has hardly rejected the prospect. Pressed recently on whether Biden or any officials in his administration deserved to be impeached, he said, “I don’t see it before me right now.”
The response reflected an awareness that impeachment — as commonplace as it has become — is deeply unpopular. A national University of Massachusetts Amherst poll released in May showed that 66% of voters oppose impeachment, including 44% who said they strongly oppose the move.
RISKY STRATEGY
The challenge McCarthy faces is similar to the one that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., confronted during the 2018 midterm election campaign, when a small but vocal group of progressives was demanding Trump’s impeachment.
Back then, she and other leading Democrats toiled to avoid publicly talking about the subject, wary of distractions from their message that could alienate independent voters and cost them their chance at winning control of the House. The task grew more difficult after they won.
Immediately after she was sworn in to Congress in 2019, for instance, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., told supporters “we’re going to impeach” Trump.
Even after Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, documented multiple instances of obstruction of justice by Trump, House Democrats were cautious about pursuing impeachment. It took nine months to get Pelosi on board.
“People can be very critical of Biden on political or policy grounds,” said Norman Eisen, who served as a lawyer for Democrats during the first impeachment of Trump. “But those are not high crimes and misdemeanors — not even close. If it’s politically difficult to do impeachment when you have compelling proof of multiple high crimes, how much more so when there’s no evidence of constitutional crimes?”
It can also be politically risky, if past impeachments are any guide. The impeachment of President Bill Clinton in 1998 backfired badly on House Republicans, making Clinton more popular than at any other time of his presidency. Democrats picked up five seats in the House that fall.
Newt Gingrich, the House speaker who quit Congress after Clinton’s impeachment amid ethics allegations and Republican losses, said he was advising McCarthy against it.
“All you have to do is say to people, ‘Kamala Harris,’” Gingrich said. “Tell me the endgame that makes any sense. As bad as Biden is, she’d be vastly worse. I don’t think the brand-new Republican majority should waste their time on a dead end.”
It takes a majority in the House to impeach a president but two-thirds in the Senate to convict and remove one from office.
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, who is in line to be the chair of the Judiciary Committee if his party wins control of the House, has floated the possibility of impeachment but more recently has taken a less-committal stance.
“That’s a call for the committee, for Republicans on the committee, in consultation with the entire conference,” he said in a recent interview.
Asked whether Republican voters were demanding impeachment, Jordan said, “Voters are demanding the facts and the truth.”