Whether They’re Going After Biden Or Harris, Same Self-Imposed Problems Plague House GOP

Last updated: 2024/08/20 at 3:00 AM

You’ve likely seen the reports by now on House Republicans’ embarrassing thud of a report on their finding after a two-year-long effort to find something, anything to impeach President Joe Biden for. Their 291-page report concluded, on cue, that the President had, supposedly, committed impeachable conduct, but it then threw up its hands, leaving the decision on whether to pursue an impeachment to the full House.

It was the exact dud of a conclusion that we’ve been expecting for months, since House Republicans held their first impeachment inquiry hearing. It was after that hearing — which was publicly televised and ended with one of the panel’s star witnesses essentially admitting that he did not think Biden had not committed any impeachable offenses — that Reps. James Comer (R-KY) and Jim Jordan (R-OH) began conducting their various impeachment inquiry interviews behind closed doors. Most notably, this led to a tussle between Hunter Biden’s lawyers and the committee chairmen, as Hunter Biden insisted that his testimony be held during an open-door session to try to avoid Republicans twisting his words.

After news broke that Alexander Smirnov — the former FBI informant whose tip to the agency has served as the focal point of House Republicans’ feverish Hunter Biden hysterics — had been arrested for lying to the FBI about said tip, House Republicans began to give up the whole charade, both publicly and privately acknowledging the party didn’t have the votes to actually pursue the impeachment.

It was all a piece of the broader dynamic we’ve watched play out repeatedly since Republicans took back the House after the 2022 midterms: the conference simply cannot get on the same page about anything, whether its meaningful legislation or the best way to use their majority to conduct baseless investigations into Trump’s perceived political enemies. That’s primarily due to the how extreme the party’s right flank has become.

We saw the most far-right members ignore their party’s slim majority, and inject all kinds of chaos into the legislating process, alienating members from more moderate districts: whether it was by ousting the old speaker or in attaching far-right culture war riders to basic spending bills that would prompt backlash for vulnerable Republicans. Even before Comer’s impeachment inquiry crashed and burned during its first hearing, several members of the House Republican conference were unwilling to embrace the bogus impeachment inquiry being pushed by far-right members, fearing it would harm their reelection chances back home.

And the dysfunction isn’t specific to Biden. As Axios reported today, many House Republicans are not convinced that opening (baseless) inquiries into Vice President Kamala Harris and her VP pick Tim Walz is the most effective use of the party’s time in the months leading up to a big election. Per Axios:

Some House GOP lawmakers fear their party’s new investigations into Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz could potentially backfire politically.

…

One House Republican, speaking on the condition of anonymity to critique their party’s investigations, said the probes are “unnecessary.”

“We have an election to win. Don’t make these people martyrs,” the lawmaker told Axios.

Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) argued that investigating Harris and Walz is “fair” but that investigators need to be sure to “handle it professionally.”