When Kevin McCarthy decided earlier this year that he’d be willing to appease the hard-right faction of the Republican Party in order to be speaker of the House, it was certain he would constantly be pressured to pay up if he hoped to keep the job.
His latest “protection” installment was delivered Tuesday, when he directed the House — without concurrence from the majority of its members — to open up an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.
The directive goes against McCarthy’s own past statements, when he said that any effort by him to unilaterally authorize an impeachment inquiry would lack legitimacy because it would be seen as a totally political maneuver, having little to do with the evidence.
Since winning control of the House following the 2022 elections, Republicans have stepped up their investigations into Biden’s only living son, Hunter Biden, and their belief that somehow the president, during his time as vice president, had illegally aided his son’s efforts to capitalize financially on his father’s position.
Certainly, Hunter Biden’s business deals were suspect. Why Burisma, the Ukrainian natural gas company, would pay him richly to sit on its board made no sense other than as an attempt to buy an inroad to his father. Same probably with the millions Hunter Biden and his company received from his Chinese partners.
But most of what has been produced to tie Joe Biden to any of these shady dealings is speculation, not evidence. The impeachment inquiry sounds like a continuation of this never-ending fishing expedition, as well as an effort to deflect from Donald Trump’s legal troubles as he and Biden head toward a possible rematch in the 2024 election.
The difference between Biden and Trump, though, is that Trump has gotten himself impeached twice and indicted four times based on a mound of evidence: things that the former president said and did that abused his power and betrayed his presidential oath to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution. Nothing close to a comparable case has been made against Joe Biden.
Impeachment proceedings are political creations, which is why Democrats were only able to get Trump impeached but not convicted. They had the votes in the House but not in the Senate. The same will be certainly true in the Senate for the Republicans if the Biden case gets that far. It may also be true in the House. McCarthy acted unilaterally precisely because he didn’t have the goods against the president to secure enough GOP votes to get a majority to support the impeachment crusade.
McCarthy and his arm-twisters on the right are hoping this inquiry will produce that evidence. That’s not how, though, the process is supposed to work.
