Republican pragmatists in the US House are beating back a rush by ultra-conservatives to fast-track impeachments of President Joe Biden and other top US government officials, intensifying GOP divisions and underscoring the fragility of the party’s House majority.
(Bloomberg) — Republican pragmatists in the US House are beating back a rush by ultra-conservatives to fast-track impeachments of President Joe Biden and other top US government officials, intensifying GOP divisions and underscoring the fragility of the party’s House majority.
The impeachment maneuvers — including an effort aimed at Biden Thursday — come as the far-right tries to dictate deep domestic spending cuts and wrench control of the party’s agenda amid their anger over Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s deal with the White House to avert a debt default.
Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado initially sought to force colleagues to vote Thursday on her articles of impeachment against Biden, bypassing committees to bring the measure straight to the floor. The measure accuses Biden of “dereliction of duty” in handling US-Mexico border issues.
But McCarthy and his lieutenants, after a tense closed-door party conference Wednesday morning, convinced Boebert to allow the House Judiciary and Homeland Security committees to review the resolution. The referral passed Thursday 219-208.
Even so, the episode exacerbated internal GOP backbiting. Swing-district Republicans and committee chairs are growing increasingly frustrated by hard-liners’ scorched-earth strategies.
A Boebert ally, Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, egged on detractors of the Boebert resolution. “Where does your representative stand?” he tweeted.
But Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska, a moderate Republican, said rushed impeachment resolutions like Boebert’s threaten to turn a serious process into a frivolous one.
“It shouldn’t be playground games,” he added.
Freshman Republican Mike Lawler, who flipped a New York district in the 2022 election, struck a similar cord. “Anybody who brings forward a privileged resolution, censure, sanction — it needs to be referred for investigation,” Lawler said.
After Thursday’s vote to refer the Boebert resolution to committee, McCarthy warned that any other attempts to bypass committees to force an impeachment vote “probably won’t go anywhere.”
House Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer, whose panel is investigating alleged wrongdoing in Biden family finances, said he wished colleagues would hold off on their individual impeachment resolutions and allow panels to conduct their probes.
“I think our investigation has been very productive,” he said.
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia had said she plans to draft a privileged resolution to impeach Biden, as well as Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, and Matthew Graves, the US attorney for the District of Columbia.
But after Thursday’s vote, Greene said she believes that the committee referral process now “will be the standard.”
–With assistance from Zach C. Cohen.
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