House GOP impeachment mania sparks internal rivalries and dissent
In 2008, David E. Kyvig, a professor of history at Northern Illinois University, published “The Age of Impeachment: American Constitutional Culture Since 1960.” In his preface, Kyvig says the purpose of the book is to answer “why impeachment has been employed so often since 1961 as opposed to its infrequent use between 1789 and 1960.” He sees the episodes as interrelated, building on each other and serving as “a sort of canary in the mine shaft, an early signal of an increasingly toxic political culture.”
Kyvig was working on his book while a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in 2004-05 where I was then serving as director of The Congress Project. I remember expressing to David (who has since passed away) my skepticism about his thesis that impeachment was a surging wave of the future. After all, I said, up until that time only two presidents had been impeached — Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998, and neither was convicted and removed from office by the Senate. President Richard Nixon’s resignation from office in 1974 saved him from that almost certain fate. Most House impeachments to date (17 of 21) have been of federal judges, as have all eight Senate convictions.
I have since eaten plenty of crow as Kyvig’s prescience has proven to be spot-on. Not only was President Donald Trump impeached twice by the Democratic-controlled House, but now members of the House Republican Freedom Caucus are lining up at their leadership’s doorstep vying for first rights to initiate impeachment resolutions aimed at President Joe Biden and his Cabinet. The fierce competition for prime sponsorship resembles a bunch of kids begging to be “first thrower” in a school yard game of circle dodgeball: “Me, me, me.”
The dodgeball metaphor is especially fitting since members are not only targeting opposing party players but their own teammates in a cutthroat contest for attention and reelection. Moreover, the impeachment proponents are getting pushback from Republican members from swing districts who fear the ploy will jeopardize their reelection chances.
The driving force behind this melee is not difficult to discern: it’s payback time for the two impeachments of former President Donald Trump by House Democrats and a quick and splashy way to publicly discredit his successor’s administration in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is serving as ringmaster of this circular circus, with his own priority clearly signaled: he wants to impeach Attorney General Merrick Garland for politically weaponizing the Justice Department.
The most notorious rivalry over impeachment has been between Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.). The former has accused the latter of plagiarizing her Biden impeachment resolution, and calling her “a little b----.”
Boebert tried to force the hand of the House on June 23 by calling up her resolution as privileged. But McCarthy, through a special rule from the Rules Committee, preempted her move with a self-executing resolution to refer the Boebert resolution to the Judiciary and Homeland Security committees on grounds that any impeachment should first be properly investigated and reported by committee.
According to The Hill’s data (June 29) Greene still holds the unofficial record as impeachment queen, having introduced five of the 11 impeachment resolutions introduced by GOP members in May and June. Those on the impeachment caucus’s chopping block, in addition to Biden, include Homeland Security Department Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and FBI Director Christopher Wray.
Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) introduced the first impeachment resolution on Mayorkas in the last Congress, and Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Texas) the first in this Congress. Fallon declaimed bragging rights, sort of, saying he was “the first one out of the gate, but I don’t really care….(S)uccess has 1,000 fathers.”
Many of the resolutions center on a mishandling of immigrants at the border, and use the term “dereliction of duty” — a military term not previously applied to impeachment offenses. Democrats have pushed back, pointing out that most of the charges being leveled at Biden and his top officials are over policy disagreements and not over “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
I keep coming back to Professor Kyvig’s 2008 book and predictions. While he observes that both successful and failed impeachments since 1960 “have functioned more or less as the founders desired,” the “uneven presidential impeachments” since Watergate have left the device “somewhat in doubt.” The founders’ expectation that it would “serve as an important check on executive aggrandizement have been disappointed.” And he concludes: “The weakening through overuse and misuse …would hardly please the framers….”
The current Congress is certainly living up to Kyvig’s concern about the overuse and misuse of the device.
Don Wolfensberger is a Congress Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, former staff director of the House Rules Committee, and author of “Changing Cultures in Congress: From Fair Play to Power Plays.” The views expressed are solely his own.