Can Republicans Play Hardball On Impeaching Biden?
Say what you will, but Democrats are not afraid to fight. Yet after four years of scorched-earth, Republicans apparently still don’t get it. Why would anyone vote for that?
By Bob Anderson
September 7, 2021
“The president is not going to be removed from office,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell when asked about the growing calls for the impeachment of President Joe Biden as a result of his failures with the Afghanistan withdrawal. Noting that Democrats control both the House and Senate, he bluntly told a Kentucky group it’s “not going to happen,” and added, “I think the way these behaviors get adjusted in this country is at the ballot box.”
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy chimed in on the question already brewing before the Afghanistan debacle, saying it “is so serious it should only be taken” in extreme cases. “If Biden takes an illegal action, we would move impeachment. But we’re not going to move … for political purposes.”
Those views embody the prevalent position of Congress over a two-centuries-long period in which only two presidents were impeached. The common understanding across political parties was that the constitutional requirement of “high crimes and misdemeanors” meant just that: “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
That all gave way to a new threshold during the Donald Trump presidency, though, one that could accurately be called the “Nike Rule”: “Just do it.”
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https://thefederalist.com/2021/09/07/can-republicans-play-hardball-on-impeaching-biden/
