If McCarthy Can’t Do Better Than This, He’s Got To Go

This came up in conversation earlier today, because I was with somebody who was absolutely furious about it. My take is a little more nuanced, but still…this is far too Stupid Party for my tastes.

House Republicans have for months threatened to impeach Joe Biden and equally disastrous members of his administration for their intentional attempts to destroy America if — which is now pretty much when — the GOP retakes control of the House in the midterms, now just two weeks away.

Apparently, those threats weren’t serious. At least not in Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s case. McCarthy last Wednesday downplayed talk of impeaching Biden or officials of the disastrous administration if the GOP regains control.

Just one problem. Republican lawmakers have introduced more than a dozen impeachment resolutions targeting Biden, Kamala Harris, and controversial Cabinet members, including Attorney General Merrick Garland, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

As reported by the Washington Post, McCarthy told Punchbowl News: “I think the country doesn’t like impeachment used for political purposes at all,” and,

You watch what the Democrats. They all came out and said they would impeach before Trump was ever sworn in. There wasn’t a purpose for it. If you spent all that time arguing against using impeachment for political purposes, you gotta be able to sustain exactly what you said.

Even worse, when he was asked if anyone in the Biden administration has risen to a level that would prompt him to consider impeachment proceedings, McCarthy said: “I don’t see it before me right now.”

No, no, no, no.

This is not that hard, and what it shows is the deficiency of Kevin McCarthy.

Here’s the thing – McCarthy is not problematic in the way Mitch McConnell is problematic. Mitch McConnell is an active impediment to the American revival. He’s a Deep State/China Class operative who’s been doing everything he could to sandbag the coming Red Wave in Senate elections, something he proved with his complete lay-down on several awful legislative measures he suspiciously failed to stop over the summer and has completely hammered home with his refusal to support several MAGA/revivalist Republicans in Senate races, like Don Bolduc in New Hampshire and Blake Masters, both of whom look pretty likely to win anyway, because they’d said they wouldn’t vote to retain him as the GOP caucus leader.

That’s McConnell. He has a record of thwarting populist Republican movements and that’s what’s led him to open warfare against President Trump. McCarthy isn’t that. McCarthy at the end of the day is a guy who really doesn’t know what to do and ultimately, he just wants the Speaker job.

Which isn’t ideal. What’s ideal is a Newt Gingrich who’s a visionary leader and a guy with the balls to go for the jugular where he can.

But a McCarthy you can live with, so long as your caucus wants things. In other words, since he’s not really a leader he can at least be a follower, so when the caucus demands things from him he’ll do them.

And the guess here is that’s probably what you’ll get from him on the question of impeachments for Biden and his cabinet. So I’m not going to completely castigate McCarthy on that answer.

But it isn’t acceptable.

Lloyd Austin and Jake Sullivan must be impeached over Afghanistan. That is non-negotiable. The disgraceful incompetence of our disorderly pullout from an effort where we spent trillions of dollars and two decades – stupidly, to be sure, but to say Afghanistan had to go the way it did is to beggar belief – demands that someone’s head should roll. That Austin is busy turning our military into a woke indoctrination factory and Sullivan was neck-deep in the Trump-Russia hoax means both are doubly impeachable and not for political reasons, but for reasons of abject failure if not refusal to act in the national interest as a member of a presidential cabinet.

How do you not impeach Pete Buttigieg over the supply chain disaster which is getting worse, not better? How do you not impeach Alejandro Mayorkas over the border? How do you not impeach Merrick Garland over the dangerous politicization of the Department of Justice?

These are not partisan impeachments. These are impeachments which must be begun as a matter of national self-preservation. The actions and failures of these and other Biden cabinet clowns must be addressed in vigorous fashion, because if they are not, the signal it sends is that it’s OK to fail this loudly. And bills of impeachment have already been brought on at least 12 of these people already, so it’s just a question of McCarthy and the leadership acting on them.

Should Biden himself be impeached? Yes. Strategically there isn’t as much value to it, and frankly it’s better if first Congress appoints an independent counsel to investigate the Biden crime family and its dealings with China and Ukraine, among others, and when that independent counsel brings back his report, which should be sometime in the spring of 2024, then an impeachment might be in order.

But the cabinet secretaries? Impeach as many as you can, as fast as you can. Frankly, if for no other reason, bringing the impeachments will expedite some resignations that would likely happen anyway. Cabinet secretaries generally won’t last a whole lot longer than a couple of years, so bringing an impeachment is a great way to get a few of them just to leave – which is a political good in and of itself, particularly when their replacements will have to go to the Senate for confirmation (and a 56- or 57-Republican majority Senate could well make for an absolute bear of a confirmation process). But more than that, when the resignations do come they’re now scalps you can put on the wall.

And Republican voters are like any other voters. They like deliverables. And Alejandro Mayorkas’ scalp on the wall is a deliverable. It doesn’t matter that he resigns after a bill of impeachment is brought, or that he’s impeached and convicted. You can take credit for forcing him out and then absolutely rake his replacement over the coals about the border in the confirmation process while the country watches with, perhaps, an appreciation for Congress conducting real oversight over a dysfunctional and evil executive branch.

But here is where I’m going to parse this a little. I say in the headline that if McCarthy can’t do better than this he’s not the right guy to be House Speaker. What that means is that if he’s putting this out there so as to close off the issue for the next couple of weeks before the election, I can live with that.

The GOP has three massively winning, earth-shaking issues to run on right now. Crime, immigration and inflation/recession are decisive issues which have created an incredible harmony between the public and the GOP. In a post a few days ago I noted the results of a Harvard-Harris poll showing that those three issues rank as the most important facing the country in the perception of the voters as well as the perception voters have of the GOP – while the Democrats are perceived to have January 6, abortion/women’s rights, climate change and guns atop their priority list.

So long as that dynamic holds true, November 8 is going to be a cataclysmic election cycle for the Democrats. In an interview I did for The American Spectator last week, Newt Gingrich predicted GOP gains will be between three and seven Senate seats and between 20 and 50 House seats, numbers which, particularly on the high end, would be transformative not just of the country but of the party itself, because the kind of Republicans who will become members of the House and Senate in such a wave election will make things possible which haven’t been since perhaps Ronald Reagan’s time. Gingrich is saying the GOP majorities after this election is over could be the largest since 1920, and that could very well herald the coming of the Fourth Era in American politics we talk about here at the site and in my book The Revivalist Manifesto (which I will not stop plugging until you’ve bought it and read the thing).

Perhaps that Fourth Era can’t begin in January of next year, but certainly by January of 2025, after Team Biden is finally blown out of office, everything you’ve known about American politics since 1932 could be subject to change.

And given that, I’m all right with McCarthy insisting on throwing everything but inflation, immigration and crime to the wind when it comes to GOP messaging. I’m even fine with him decrying political impeachments as the kind of BS you get with Nancy Pelosi and not the GOP. That isn’t a bad talking point.

I’m fine with it up to the day after the election.

Once Republican control of the House is assured, he’s got to reverse himself and set up the figurative guillotine and begin the Reign of Terror on Capitol Hill.

Not for political purposes. For national self-preservation purposes.

This cabinet is the worst in American history. It’s filled with hacks, freaks, clowns and saboteurs who have performed in ways it wouldn’t have been thought possible before last year. And that must be punished with the special kind of pain impeachment hearings can apply.

Kevin McCarthy has to know this. So while it’s acceptable if he’s simply shining the media on so as to get the issue off the front pages until after the election, that’s one thing. But if this was a real position of his, he’s either too timid or his standards are too low to suit the needs of a country in crisis and we’ve got to get better leadership than that.

Impeachment – certainly of the cabinet, and leading up to Biden (or perhaps in his case it’s 25th Amendment proceedings following a demand, which will be refused, that he undergo an independent cognitive examination) – had better be on the table. Period.