According to the medieval Italian poet Dante, there is a sign at the entrance of Hell that reads: “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.” These days, a similar sign might as well hang above the door to the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives.
The Constitution puts the House of Representatives at the very heart of our democracy. The Republican majority in the House has turned it into a do-nothing, hyper-partisan cesspool that accomplishes nothing.
Well, that might not be fair. It has accomplished some things: chaos and mayhem. On a daily basis. Fueled by a combination of incompetence, ultra-partisanship, ignorance about how to govern, and a complete inability to do so.
What Republicans have found time to do is careen from potential government shutdown to potential government shutdown and fight for nearly a full year over who will be Speaker of the House.
On Wednesday, December 13, they also found time to vote to launch a formal impeachment inquiry aimed at President Joe Biden.
No one who voted for the resolution was able to cite a “high crime or misdemeanor” they believe the president has committed – or even a “low crime or misdemeanor,” for that matter.
Nor did anyone supporting the resolution produce any evidence or credible claim that he has done so.
Embarrassingly, all four Iowans in the House – all Republicans – voted to authorize the partisan impeachment inquiry.
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Editor’s Note: All 221 Republicans voted to formalize the impeachment inquiry into President Biden; none could cite any evidence.
It is hyper-partisanship at its worst. Iowans in Congress should know better, but apparently, they don’t. Or they don’t care because, in their world, politics always comes before our country.
My guess is that their vote will be a lasting legacy of shame, sure to be in the lead of their political obituaries when their careers in Congress come to an end.
What drives this? Several things.
First, deep divisions within the Republican House majority which produced two of the weakest Speakers in the history of the House.
I knew this day was coming back when the House was trying to elect its first Speaker for this Congress. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Matt Gaetz (R-FL), and the others who require but don’t get enough adult supervision were making crazy demands left and right. Rep. Kevin McCarthy made it clear he’d rather destroy the House than let it go one more day without him in the Speaker’s Chair. He was agreeing to everything, even new demands that replaced the ones to which he had originally agreed.
I remember listening as Greene was outlining her latest demands and feeling the chills run down my spine as she did so: “I want to see somebody impeached,” she said.
“Somebody” impeached. One of the many costs of her vote for House Speaker. It was clear she meant Biden. Why just leverage your vote for a new bridge in your district when you can trade it for the impeachment of a president?
She traded her vote, impeaching “somebody” became part of the Republican agenda, and once McCarthy was gone, the new Speaker was not strong enough to pull it back.
And so here we are.
There is another reason, of course. The obvious one: Republican payback for Trump’s two impeachments. If Biden gets tarred with impeachment, then maybe it won’t matter so much that Trump was impeached, goes that thinking.
Trump badly wants this happen and his minions in the House are willing to do it for him. This alone ought to send chills down your back
There is one big and important difference between impeaching Trump and impeaching Biden, of course: Trump is a one-man, perpetual motion, walking crime wave. Actual crimes drove Trump’s impeachments. There were tons of evidence and plenty of crimes.
For Biden? Even after a year of poking around, Republicans still can’t produce a single crime they say he committed or any evidence that he has done so. The impeachment inquiry they just voted for is literally a fishing expedition to see if they can find something they can charge him with – anything. Because right now, they have nothing.
We like to tell ourselves that our Iowa Republicans in Congress are “different” than all those other yahoos out there in Washington, DC. But they are not. Their impeachment inquiry votes prove it. They are part of the very same marauding pack – today’s Republican Party, which is to say, Donald Trump’s marauding gang – which is working to destabilize, if not outright destroy, American democracy.
The reasons Iowa’s members of the House gave for their votes on this most grave constitutional matter are absurd.
Rep. Zack Nunn (R-3rd IA), predictably, was the most absurd. He told KMA Radio the impeachment inquiry he voted for “gives Congress the power to conduct oversight of the executive branch.” That’s odd. For the last 275 years, there has been strong, bi-partisan consensus that the Constitution established that fact at the very beginning of our government.
And then, spoken like somebody who won his last general election with a whopping 50.26% of the vote, Nunn added, “I’m going to be impartial on this going forward, but I want to make sure that Congress and the American people have the facts presented to them.”
Going forward? I’m sorry, Congressman, but when it comes to impeachment, partisanship is not in the playbook. Ever.
Nunn thinks he gets a “partisanship pass” on the first round of voting regarding impeachment? No. The time for impartiality was with this vote. Now. He missed it!
Rep. Ashley Hinson’s (R-2nd IA) explanation also falls short. In a conference call with reporters, she said, “We have been able to trace through numerous shell companies many of the transactions that funnel dollars directly from the Chinese Communist Party through the Biden family.”
No evidence. No crime. No specifics. No one who voted for that impeachment inquiry resolution provided either. Not Even after a year of so-called “investigating!”
Just the smear.
And did you notice something else about her statement? Her smear isn’t even about President Joe Biden.
It’s about the “Biden family.” Ah, yes. Good old punching bag Hunter Biden. I don’t know what Hunter Biden did or did not do. The courts are sorting that out as we speak. If he broke the law, prosecute, convict, and sentence him. But whatever he did – if anything – it is most certainly not something for which a president can be impeached.
We don’t impeach presidents for the crimes of their relatives. This was certainly comforting news, no doubt, for Ivanka and Jared during their four-year grifting tour in government at the highest levels during the Trump administration.
And let me remind you, no Republican has produced evidence of a crime committed by Joe Biden. Or even the suggestion of one. They’ve produced noise and press releases but no evidence and no credible suggestion of a crime.
The impeachment inquiry is a stark reminder of the unending Benghazi hearings when the Republicans controlled the House during the Obama administration. Kevin McCarthy later admitted – bragged actually – that the sole purpose of those hearings was to smear Hillary Clinton and drive her poll numbers down.
Exact same dynamic at work here.
Editor’s Note: This Opinion emphasizes Iowa Members of Congress who voted to impeach the President, despite no evidence of crime, but MY RURAL AMERICA reminds our readers that all 221 Republicans voted to formalize the impeachment inquiry into President Biden. All Democrats present voted against the decision, so no matter what state our readers reside in, this Opinion applies to 100% of Republican Members of Congress nationwide.
Iowa’s Randy Feenstra (R-4th IA) had an explanation for his vote that is hard to repeat without laughing. He complains that President Biden has been “uncooperative and evasive” with congressional committees. Therefore, an impeachment inquiry is needed to help Congress get “one step closer” to the facts.
NOW Feenstra is going to get concerned about a President supposedly being uncooperative with congressional investigations? And he thinks that an impeachment inquiry will solve that problem?
Did he even follow the news at all when Trump was routinely stiffing congressional committees during his two impeachments or even when Trump White House staff ignored congressional subpoenas that were part of an impeachment proceeding.
Hypocrisy anyone?
Rep. Mariannette Miller Meeks (R-1st IA) had the weakest response of all. She says she was proud to vote for the impeachment inquiry. Why? “It’s the next necessary step in the methodical process” of investigating the president.
Oh. Well that settles that then, doesn’t it?
Governing a country as big and diverse as the United States is hard work. It would be nice if the Republican controlled House of Representatives would carry its constitutional share of the load and work to help make our country better and stronger.
They don’t and they won’t as long as they prioritize their own tribal wars and pursue hyper partisanship over helpful policy.
America deserves better than an “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here” House of Representatives.
Iowans in the US House must do better. They work for America and Iowa, not Donald Trump or the Republican Party. Their job is to enact sound policy that makes America better, not pursue Donald Trump’s vindictive, vengeful, vendettas.