Posted on 09/01/2021 11:08:16 AM PDT by RandFan
Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) on Wednesday shot down calls from within his own party to try to impeach President Biden, pointing to next year's midterm election as a potential check on the administration.
"Well, look, the president is not going to be removed from office. There's a Democratic House, a narrowly Democratic Senate. That's not going to happen," McConnell said at an event in Kentucky, asked if Biden's handling of the drawdown in Afghanistan merits impeachment and if he would support it.
"There isn't going to be an impeachment," he added.
McConnell's comments come as some Republicans in the House and Senate call for Biden's impeachment or for him to resign or be involuntarily removed from office over the botched Afghanistan exit.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said last week that he thought Biden should be impeached. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who chairs the Senate GOP campaign arm, questioned if it was time to invoke the 25th Amendment, which allows the majority of the Cabinet or a body appointed by the Congress to remove a president.
Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) both called for Biden to resign and House conservatives, including some of former President Trump's biggest allies, have called for Biden to be impeached.
McConnell's comments aren't the first time he's pushed back on impeachment calls. Asked late last month if he agreed with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who filed three impeachment articles, that Biden should be impeached, McConnell told a Kentucky TV station: "No."
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has also stopped short of embracing impeachment calls, while predicting that a GOP-controlled House would probe Biden's Afghanistan exit and that there would be a "day of reckoning."
After Democrats twice impeached Trump, first in 2020 for abuse of power in his dealings with Ukraine and in 2021 for inciting an insurrection after a mob of his supporters breached the Capitol, GOP strategists have predicted that Biden is likely to face impeachment calls if Republicans take back the House next year.
If a GOP-controlled House were to impeach Biden, it could eat up precious floor time in the Senate where trials typically take weeks and grind all other business to a halt. No president has been formally found guilty at the end of a Senate trial.
McConnell, instead of looking ahead to 2023, pointed to the midterm elections, where Republicans are feeling increasingly bullish about the chances of winning back the House or Senate, as an opportunity to hold Biden accountable.
"The report card you get is every two years," McConnell said. "I think the way these behaviors get adjusted in this country is at the ballot box."
To win back the House, Republicans need to pick up a handful of seats and need a net gain of just one seat to flip the Senate.
"I do think we're likely to see a typical kind of midterm reaction to a new administration... Typically there is some buyer's remorse," he said.
Remember his wife is Elaine Chao, who has relatives in China.
PARENTS!!
Yes. Thanks!
The question so many people (it appears) never ask themselves is, Why Has There Never Been A President Impeached, And Removed From Office?
Hint it has nothing to do with they deserved or not.
You are assuming he will run in 2024.
OK, so why hasn’t there been?
By the 2024 election we want even the libs to be screaming for his removal. The way that happens is if he stays.
The question is, can we survive him?
That's why I've been preaching TERM LIMITS for the past thirty years. There would BE no McConnells. And deep-state bureaucrats need to be transferred every few years to prevent their setting up their fiefdoms.
Which is why, along with term limits, I advocate that ALL POLITICAL DONATIONS BE ANONYMOUS. You can't sell influence if you don't know who's buying. Americans should be allowed to donate to any candidate or party they choose, in any amount they wish; that's FREEDOM. But to purchase an outcome renders it BRIBERY, a crime.
Why do so many attorneys who could earn over half a million a year without breaking a sweat campaign to win a job that pays $174,000, in a high cost-high tax environment?
Follow the money.
Mitch has all the goods on everyone.
His job is to keep his caucus under control, and he ain’t going anywhere either, not for awhile yet.
McConnell doesn’t want Heels Up
Yes. He’s an ass but he is correct.
Can we survive him any better than we could Harris? It’s a coin flip
Even if McConnell can't get 67 votes in the Senate, he can still encourage Republicans in the House to push for it.
It's insane to let the Democrats cry "impeachment" every time President Trump sneezed, and then have Republicans cower from doing the same in return.
The trap for Republicans is that Democrats know they can be abusive first and get away with it, because Republicans will reject "whataboutism," and insist on taking the high road in contrast, essentially giving the Democrats a free "kick me" every time.
Nothing will change unless Democrats feel the blowback. Democrats get away with free kick-me against Republicans; they get to do the crime to advance their agenda and the Republicans are forced by their "leadership" to stay on the high road.
-PJ
But to purchase an outcome renders it BRIBERY, a crime.
**************
Agree with all your points. Our political system has become intolerably corrupt.
Because it is the Mutual Assured Destruction of politics.
One party impeaches and removes a President. The next time that party holds the White House...that President WILL be impeached and removed.
The closest we have come in modern times is Richard Nixon...and I doubt he would have been removed.
The Impeachment card is a Fund raising tool. For Both parties.
The only way it will happen is if one party controls Both Houses, by a Large majority, the other the White House, and 75-80% of voters say the President Has To Go. By the time that happens a President will pull a Richard Nixon and resign.
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