Wingnut follies pt 2 - the Majorkas impeachment

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Heather Cox Richardson today has a nice overview of this public-fit-being-pitched by the (borderline!) House Republican majority.

Instead of addressing border security through legislation, House Republicans instead are moving forward with their plan to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. They wrote articles of impeachment even before holding hearings.

… In all our history, only one cabinet officer has been impeached. William Belknap, whose eight years as secretary of war under President U. S. Grant had been marked by ostentatious displays of wealth and apparent kickbacks from army contracts, was charged with corruption in March 1876…

Almost 150 years later, the impeachment of Mayorkas would be the second effort to impeach a cabinet member. Yet there is no suggestion that Mayorkas has done anything but try to implement the law, even as the administration has repeatedly asked for more funding to make it possible for him to do his job.

Ah, but there’s the rub - you see, they have an issue, and they don’t want him to do his job.

Representative Seth Magaziner (D-RI) noted that “across the system, we are at and above capacity, and so, what should the secretary do? The secretary, because he has not received the funding to provide adequate detention capacity, has to use his judgment for who to detain and who to release. That is not illegal. It is certainly not impeachable”.

Who needs high crimes and misdemeanors? And besides, Trump would never have done this, right?

“And it is the exact same kind of discretion that every other director before him has used. In the last two years of the Trump administration, 52% of migrants apprehended at the southern border were released, not detained…. Nearly a million people. I did not hear my Republican colleagues trying to impeach the secretary or acting secretary under the Trump administration during those years. But here they are, trying to impeach Secretary for doing the exact same thing.”

In fact,

… despite Republicans’ false claims that Biden has established “open borders”—immigrants were more likely to be released into the country during Trump's term than during Biden’s.

But the impeachment marches forward, regardless. I’m curious to see if Mike Johnson can get a unanimous House GOP vote for a completely pointless political stunt, since there’s no way it would get through the Senate. But right now, the Senate is actually trying to write a bipartisan bill aimed at solving the problem, and that must be stopped. So part of that effort is throwing an impeachment trial at them.

More below.

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Earlier this year, the bomb-throwers in the House insisted there will be no Ukrainian aid (which has widespread support) without a border bill. So, it turns out that the Senate has quietly been working on just such a bipartisan compromise bill.

The problem is, the Trumpies really don’t want a border bill. Trump himself has railed against it, saying “stupid Republicans” shouldn’t give Biden a win, even though it’s said to be basically the same bill Trump asked for in 2018.

The Trumpies have even gone so far as to censure the wild-eyed liberal Senator from Oklahoma, James Lankford, for the sin of being the lead Republican negotiator in the effort to solve the problem. These folks haven’t actually seen the bill, of course- just consorting-with-the-enemy is enough for them to threaten his political career.

And in response, perhaps finally, Republican Senators are getting PO’ed at being jerked around by Trump.

Says Mitt Romney, it’s “really appalling”:

“The American people are suffering as a result of what’s happening at the border,” he said. “And someone running for president ought to try and get the problem solved, as opposed to saying, ‘Hey, save that problem! Don’t solve it! Let me take credit for solving it later.’”

Says Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC):

“I didn’t come here to have the president as a boss or a candidate as a boss. I came here to pass good, solid policy," Tillis said. “It is immoral for me to think you looked the other way because you think this is the linchpin for President Trump to win.”

Says Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND):

“There are a good number of people for whom border security is too good an issue to give up,” said. “And I do reject that. I’ve always rejected the notion that perfect has to be the standard."

Says Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), members need to remember how big this moment is for the border and for Ukraine and put their own politics aside.

“I’m not giving up. This is not about Trump and this is not about me. This is about our country. This is about democracy around the world. This is about security for our own country and so let’s keep pushing to get this border deal,” she said. “Let’s stand by the commitments that we have made for our friends and our allies so that our word actually means something.”

McConnell sounds like he may have had enough of Trump’s antics too. Are you counting? I am. The spineless blobs like Cruz are still kowtowing to Trump’s demands, but could it be possible that there would be enough grown-ups on the Republican side to help get 60 votes (assuming squishes like Sinema and Manchin could be counted on to overcome a filibuster)?

Mike Johnson says any Senate bill is dead on arrival in the House, but with a razor-thin majority, am I dreaming that a discharge petition, requiring a simple majority vote to bring a bill to the floor, might change that?

Yeah, I’m probably dreaming. The GOP seems to have fully morphed from Government cannot do anything good to Government must not do anything good.

But sometimes dreams come true.

[Lux Interior]

They learned their lesson when they not only lost abortion as a wedge issue, but it turned around and bit them in the ass.