House Republican leaders had a plan. After months of effort, they would bring articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the floor, pass the resolution, and “send a message” to the White House.
That plan, at least initially, failed in embarrassing fashion. A week ago, GOP officials who thought they had the votes to impeach the Cabinet secretary discovered that they were one vote short. House Speaker Mike Johnson issued a written statement soon after insisting that Republican leaders “fully intend to bring Articles of Impeachment against Secretary Mayorkas back to the floor when we have the votes for passage.”
When might that be? We now have an answer.
In a dramatic vote, the GOP-led House voted 214-213 to impeach Mayorkas, making the Department of Homeland Security chief only the second Cabinet secretary in American history to be impeached. The only other member of this tiny club is Secretary of War William Belknap, who was impeached in 1876 — after he left office — over alleged bribes. (He was later acquitted by senators.)
The good news for House Republicans is that their successful impeachment effort undoes last week’s fiasco, while satisfying a demand from the party’s far-right base. The bad news for House Republicans is that they’ve taken the extraordinary step of using Congress’ impeachment power as a partisan toy — and just about everyone knows it.
As we discussed last week, Republicans have uncovered literally no evidence of the DHS secretary committing high crimes; the party’s impeachment hearings were a joke; and the impeachment effort has been condemned by constitutional experts from the left, right and center, senators from both parties, some prominent voices in conservative media, and former Homeland Security secretaries from both Democratic and Republican administrations.
The effort may have succeeded, but by any fair measure, this was, and is, a dramatic abuse. Making matters worse, it’s likely to be an inconsequential political victory for House GOP lawmakers, in part because the Democratic-led Senate won’t take the impeachment resolution seriously and also because the party is unlikely to receive any meaningful political rewards from this stunt. Indeed, for all of the House speaker’s recent boasts about his conference’s “governing” successes, the fact remains that House Republicans have struggled to a historic degree to legislate; they’ve rejected the border bill they demanded; and they continue to flirt with government shutdown deadlines, unable to fund federal operations through the rest of the fiscal year. It was against this backdrop that GOP leaders decided to once again put aside real work and impeach a Cabinet secretary without cause. If Republicans are waiting for an outpouring of applause from the American mainstream, they should probably lower their expectations.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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