After approving articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas that are doomed to fail in the Senate, House Republicans face a perplexing question: How — and when — do you accept a political loss in the least embarrassing way?
It has been nearly a month since House Republicans impeached Mr. Mayorkas by a single vote, advancing a case that constitutional scholars called baseless before Democrats won a special election on Long Island and the one needed to approve the impeachment destroying majority support. But rather than rushing the articles to the Senate to try to force from office one of the officials they blame for the chaos at the U.S. southern border, Republicans approved them.
There is little mystery as to why. Republican leaders know their impeachment trial will quickly fail in the Democratic-controlled Senate, where even Republicans have expressed significant doubts about how it will be carried out.
Leaders are expected to quickly forego a trial by either dismissing the charges outright or moving to a quick vote in which Republicans have no chance of reaching the two-thirds needed to convict and Removal of Mr. Mayorkas is necessary. They take their time before suffering this spectacular defeat.
“You know it’s dead upon arrival,” said Sen. Joe Manchin III, the conservative Democrat from West Virginia. “So they want to play with it like it’s still hanging out there. They’re going to use all the leverage they can get from it and get as many miles out of it as they can, because as soon as it gets here, we’re going to power it up and shoot it and it’s gone.”
Democrats who control the Senate view the impeachment as a fact-free partisan smear against a Biden administration official. They have made it clear that they want to quickly dismiss the matter rather than waste time on it.
Even many Senate Republicans, who consider themselves more serious statesmen than their counterparts in the other chamber, are not thrilled with the strength of the House’s arguments.
“The idea of impeaching a Cabinet secretary seems a little strange to me, but they did it,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer, Republican of North Dakota. “We’re ready to sit as a jury as quickly as possible and get this over with, but if it never comes to an end, I think that’s fine too.”
House Republicans plan to push for a full trial and will use the next few weeks to build public pressure to force the Senate to hold such a trial, according to a leadership aide. If they get time for a trial, the thinking goes, they will at least get media coverage of their allegations against the Biden administration’s top immigration official. That could give them a high-profile platform for one of their biggest election-year attacks on the president and Democrats — a clear political boon even if Mr. Mayorkas is ultimately acquitted.
The current strategy is to wait until Republicans and Democrats finish negotiating and passing a series of spending bills, a process that is expected to take until March 22, Republicans say.
“We have to provide the resources,” said Rep. Ben Cline of Virginia, one of the Republican Party’s impeachment managers, when asked about the reason for the delay.
But the delay has also contributed to a widespread feeling on Capitol Hill that the charges against Mr. Mayorkas lack any real urgency and that impeachment has now become so downplayed as to be almost irrelevant.
“It didn’t make any difference. It just hasn’t had any impact,” said Sen. Mike Rounds, Republican of South Dakota. He said his only concern was “the amount of time an impeachment trial could take before checking off a list of more important priorities, such as a national defense bill and reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration.”
“We probably have 20 weeks left this year, but last year’s funding hasn’t been exhausted yet,” he said. “We haven’t even started with this year’s funding yet.”
“These are compulsory courses,” he added. “We are unable to complete the required courses.”
Democrats see a pattern in House Republicans rushing to score temporary victories to please their conservative base without thinking about how to achieve lasting victories.
“I think the dog got the truck here; They’re stuck and don’t know how to move forward,” Rep. Glenn F. Ivey, Democrat of Maryland, who sits on the Homeland Security Committee, said of House Republicans. “On the one hand, the Senate has told them in no uncertain terms that they see this as a political ploy and will immediately reject it. On the other hand, they can’t sit there forever because they’ve acted like this is some kind of national emergency. So I don’t know how they get out.”
It’s not the first time the House has delayed sending articles of impeachment to the Senate. In an attempt to influence the rules of President Donald J. Trump’s first trial, Speaker Nancy Pelosi waited weeks in early 2020 before sending articles of impeachment to the Senate.
At the time, Republicans, including several who are now among the 11 Republican impeachment managers charging Mr. Mayorkas, criticized Ms. Pelosi for withholding the articles.
“Speaker Pelosi argued that it was urgent to impeach President Trump, but then kept the articles of impeachment in place for nearly 30 days,” Rep. Andy Biggs, Republican of Arizona, who is one of the current impeachment managers, wrote on Twitter at the time. “Your veracity is highly questionable.”
Rep. Mark E. Green, Republican of Tennessee and chairman of the Homeland Security Committee that led the impeachment of Mr. Mayorkas, also addressed how she slowly advanced the articles.
“Democrats promised us that the evidence was ‘overwhelming’ and the case was ‘urgent,'” Mr. Green had said. “But the only bipartisan vote was against impeachment, and Democrats sat on the articles for four weeks because they knew they had done such a terrible job of finding evidence of impeachment.”
The delay ultimately didn’t help the Democrats’ cause. The result, as expected, was Mr. Trump’s acquittal, which he described as an exoneration.
“Now we have this beautiful word – I never thought it would sound so good,” Trump said at the time. “This is called a ‘total acquittal’.”
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2024-03-06 21:03:42
www.nytimes.com
