The GOP’S blunders take their toll
House Republicans who have become indifferent to the adverse consequences of nihilism and performative politics might want to consider the toll their chaos-producing antics are taking.
From vowing to pursue meritless impeachments to nixing a border security measure to please former president Donald Trump, they have given Democrats plenty of ammunition to blast them out of the majority in November.
Republicans, by the admission of conservative Rep. Chip Roy (Tex.), have not a single accomplishment on which to run this year. “For the life of me, I do not understand how you can go to the trouble of campaigning, raising money, going to events, talking to people, coming to this town as a member of a party who allegedly stands for something … and then do nothing about it,” he bellowed on the House floor in November. “One thing: I want my Republican colleagues to give me one thing — one — that I can go campaign on and say we did. One!” He got no answer.
Most Republicans voted against the overwhelmingly popular infrastructure bill. Now they routinely claim credit for it.
Only occasionally do they get called out for hypocrisy. (Get ready to hear plenty of it as the campaign heats up.) With help from some Republicans in the Senate and very few in the House, Democrats were able to pass the infrastructure bill in 2021.
As with infrastructure, Republicans have largely escaped blame for causing economic havoc thanks to Democratic votes for keeping the government open and avoiding a default on the debt.
Now, however, with no one to cover their tracks, Republicans risk making themselves vulnerable to voters disgusted with partisan melodrama. On the impeachment front, Republicans embarrassingly have come up with nothing to justify the impeachments of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas or President Biden.
As for Mayorkas, Republicans’ favorite lawyer, Jonathan Turley, wrote in the Daily Beast that “being a bad person is not impeachable — or many cabinets would be largely empty,” nor is doing a bad job. He added that if poor performance were grounds for impeachment, Mayorkas “would be only the latest in a long line of cabinet officers frog-marched into Congress for constitutional termination.”
Norman Eisen, former impeachment counsel to the House Judiciary Committee, along with Democracy 21 founder Fred Wertheimer and researcher Sasha Matsuki,
wrote for MSNBC: “Both the Biden and Mayorkas impeachments are clearly not backed up by evidence. … What really concerns us, though, is the way these impeachments will both weaponize a key constitutional remedy and undermine its sober original intent.”
In turning impeachment into a “partisan joke” to satisfy four-times-indicted and twice-impeached Trump, they wind up revealing their own recklessness, irresponsibility and deep dishonesty.
When Turley, a fierce defender of Trump during his impeachments, and Eisen, a counsel to House impeachment managers, agree these are baseless stunts, the jig might be up for Republicans.
Making matters worse, House and Senate Republicans’ objection to a massive funding bill to secure the border — to make Mayorkas’s job easier — only underscores their cynical disinterest in actually securing the border. Even for some Republicans, this is a bridge too far. “I didn’t come here to have the president as a boss or a candidate as a boss. I came here to pass good, solid policy,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said last week. “It is immoral for me to think you looked the other way because you think this is the linchpin for President Trump to win.”
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-utah) denounced Republicans’ obstructionism as well. “The border is a very important issue for Donald Trump. And the fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and Congress people that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem — because he wants to blame Biden for it — is really appalling,” Romney said. “The American people are suffering as a result of what’s happening at the border. And someone running for president ought to try and get the problem solved, as opposed to saying, ‘Hey, save that problem! Don’t solve it! Let me take credit for solving it later.’”
Put differently, Republicans’ brazen objection to arguably the most serious border funding
measure in decades makes both their Mayorkas impeachment and caterwauling about the border look absurdly cynical, even for them.
Unsurprisingly, the public is not buying any of it. Last year, a Wall Street Journal poll found that, concerning Biden, “while overwhelming shares of Republicans support impeachment and Democrats oppose it, independents on the whole side with the opponents, the poll found, with 51% against impeachment and 37% in favor.”
As my Post colleague Aaron Blake found in a December review of polling that showed meager support for impeachment, “If the poll numbers don’t move significantly toward where they were for Trump’s impeachments (and are now for his indictments), a Biden impeachment vote could be tricky for a lot of Republicans — and for GOP leadership. And failing to even hold a vote would be a remarkable capitulation.”
Matters have not improved for Republicans.
A USA Today-suffolk University poll in January found, “Republicans’ impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden could be costing them with voters, particularly with America’s moderates. About twice as many of these middle-of-the-road voters — a crucial bloc for both parties in this year’s presidential election — said they oppose rather than support the House GOP’S recent impeachment inquiry.”
Republicans overwhelmingly were against Biden’s popular infrastructure bill and in favor of shutting down the government, defaulting on the debt and conducting bogus impeachment hearings that the voters do not want while opposing a tough border control bill.
Democrats can hardly believe their good fortune heading into November.
Chip Roy likely will not be the only one who cannot think of a single reason to keep them in power.