Impeachment was once seen as perhaps the most serious check on corruption and abuse of power developed by the founders. Now it looks in danger of becoming just another tool in partisan fights.

If the House follows through on this week’s committee recommendation and impeaches Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the secretary of homeland security, it will be the first time in American history that a sitting cabinet officer has been impeached. But Mr. Mayorkas is not as lonely as all that.

Republicans have also filed articles of impeachment against his boss, President Biden, as well as Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland and Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, while threatening them against Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona.

Indeed, threats of impeachment have become a favorite pastime for Republicans following the lead of former President Donald J. Trump, who has pressed his allies for payback for his own two impeachments while in office. The chances of Mr. Mayorkas, much less Mr. Biden, ever being convicted in the Senate, absent some shocking revelation, seem to be just about zero, and the others appear in no serious danger even of being formally accused by the House.

But impeachment, once seen as perhaps the most serious check on corruption and abuse of power developed by the founders, now looks in danger of becoming a constitutional dead letter, just another weapon in today’s bitter, tit-for-tat partisan wars. Mr. Trump’s two acquittals made clear that a president could feel assured of keeping his office no matter how serious his transgressions, as long as his party stuck with him, and the impeachment-in-search-of-a-high-crime efforts of the Biden era have been written off as just more politics.

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  • Spottso@lemmy.world
    39·
    10 months ago

    This is written in such an infuriating both-sides-ism way. Trump was impeached twice on real grounds vs the Republicans impeaching everyone they can find for no good reason is so far from the same thing.

    • breakfastmtn@lemmy.caOP
      12·
      10 months ago

      Interesting. I disagree. Their argument is that impeachment was taken seriously up to the Trump administration and is being trivialized by Republicans since. This sentence makes it clear that they think Trump’s impeachments were serious:

      Mr. Trump’s two acquittals made clear that a president could feel assured of keeping his office no matter how serious his transgressions, as long as his party stuck with him, and the impeachment-in-search-of-a-high-crime efforts of the Biden era have been written off as just more politics.

      He’s saying that impeachment should have worked but didn’t because of Republicans. As opposed to Republican attempts to impeach Democrats:

      Indeed, to the contrary, several Republicans have derided their party’s zeal for impeachment. Whatever his son Hunter did, they note, there is no evidence that Mr. Biden did anything wrong, and the Mayorkas impeachment centers on a policy dispute, not a criminal accusation.

      And:

      Michael J. Gerhardt, an impeachment scholar at the University of North Carolina, said Republicans were using impeachment not for accountability but for political damage. The pushes to impeach President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas are plainly attempts to make impeachment just another weapon in the partisan warfare of Washington,” he said.

      And:

      Indeed, it is that sting that may be driving Mr. Trump, who has made no secret of his desire to impeach Mr. Biden and his team as revenge for his own impeachments. “They did it to me,” he said in a radio interview last fall. “Had they not done it to me,” he added, “perhaps you wouldn’t have it being done to them.”

      ‘Serious transgressions’ vs ‘no evidence of wrongdoing’, ‘partisan warfare’, and ‘revenge’.

      It seems clear to me that, like we do, the author sees a fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans. The Republican accusations are actually so frivolous that even the Biden administration themselves aren’t concerned about them.

      If anything, I think he’s being too generous to the Republicans that impeached Clinton. I’d argue this is an acceleration of bad faith political theatre that began with Gingrich. It’s something that’s much worse now but not entirely new since Trump.