In the space this week of 24 hours— Wednesday and Thursday— the hard-right of the Republican Party maneuvered votes in the House of Representatives to censure Democrat Adam Schiff for “falsehoods, misrepresentations and abuses of sensitive information,” then to consider articles of impeachment against Joe Biden for “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
The House has gone off the rails. The fanatics of the hard-right are pushing it, but the rest aren’t doing much to stop it.
Adam Schiff’s sin? According to the sponsor of Wednesday's censure, Florida Representative Anna Paulina Luna, “Adam Schiff launched an all-out political campaign built on baseless distortions against a sitting U.S. president.” She refers, of course, to the first of Donald Trump’s unprecedented two impeachments, the one where Trump made his “perfect call” to extort the president of Ukraine to dig up dirt on his rival Joe Biden in exchange for U.S. military aid. Because of that and more, the president was charged with the abuse of his power and the obstruction of Congress. Schiff was the manager of the case against Trump, which is why he was the target of the censure. Luna originally wanted to also tack on a fine of $16-million against Schiff but the saner minds of her party knocked that one down as unconstitutional.
Joe Biden’s crime? According to Colorado’s Lauren Boebert who yesterday introduced the impeachment bill, “President Biden has intentionally facilitated a complete and total invasion at the southern border.” In the articles of impeachment, “President Biden, with such conduct, has demonstrated a failure to uphold Federal immigration law, violating his oath to the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with the rule of law and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.”
We’re supposed to forget the fact that it was Trump’s punishing policies against South and Central American nations that pushed more migrants to head for our southern border. We’re also supposed to forget the fact that for decades, Republicans have done no more than Democrats to fix our broken immigration system. But now, they want to make the president the scapegoat for it all.
In the case of the censure vote against Schiff, the very nature of it— political punishment— goes against the history of censures against elected representatives in the House. In the past century there have only been seven. From Representative Charles Diggs, censured in 1979 for payroll and mail fraud, to Daniel Flood for bribery, to Charles Wilson for improper use of campaign funds, to both Gerry Studds and Daniel Crane for sexual conduct with a House page, to Charles Rangel for all kinds of financial misdeeds, to the most recent censure two years ago of Arizona’s Paul Gosar for posting a video on Twitter and Instagram depicting him killing Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and attacking Joe Biden.
Before those, the censure of representatives was reserved mainly for such terrible transgressions as assault, supporting the Confederacy, selling appointments to military academies, and the most unique: assisting in 1856 in the caning of anti-slavery Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner.
But now, with these radical Republicans of the hard-right, managing an impeachment against an accused president is grounds enough for censure. It passed— with the support of Speaker Kevin McCarthy— on a party-line vote of 213 to 209.
In the case of the impeachment bill against Biden, which now will go to two Republican-led committees for consideration, its ring of political retribution is as clear as a bell. When Donald Trump was impeached, the first time was for abuse of power and obstruction of justice, then the second time for inciting the insurrection of January 6th. The framers of the Constitution, after allowing for the removal of elected officials for “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors,” failed to define “other high crimes and misdemeanors.”
But the smell test defines it well enough. Trump’s charges made the cut. They were the stuff of impeachment. Biden’s don’t. But in this era of punishment over policy, the bill to consider impeachment passed on a party-line vote of 219-208.
Adam Schiff, after being censured, summarized today’s GOP as well as anyone could. He called it “the race to the extreme.” That is validated by the hard-right’s plans to also censure Democratic Representative Bennie Thompson, who chaired the House January 6th Committee, and to impeach the Homeland Security secretary and the director of the FBI, a Trump appointee who got on their bad side after the raid against Trump at Mar-a-Lago.
It is also validated by the words of the leading lights of the hard-right. Florida’s Matt Gaetz said after this week’s portentous votes, “This is what we were talking about.” Texas’s Chip Roy of the House Freedom Caucus threatened, “This is just the beginning.” And Lauren Boebert vowed that if the House committees considering Biden’s impeachment drag their feet, she will bring her resolution back to the House floor “every day for the rest of my time here in Congress.”
There is an irony in all this. These people censured Adam Schiff for “an all-out political campaign.” Then the next day, by moving to impeach Joe Biden, they turned around and waged one themselves.
Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 37-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.
Trying to have any sort of logical or meaningful conversation with Marjorie Taylor Greene or Lauren Boebert is an exercise in futility. Talking to a post would make more sense. We should be very worried that they both had enough votes from people just like them to put them into seats of power.
The fix for that conundrum may take more effort than we collective have.
Folks dedicated to reducing the scope of gov now see dems as communist enemies and Schiff one of their leaders.
The only answer is to defeat as many of them as possible next Nov.
Thanks Greg