Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell Cautions House Colleagues Against Pursuing President Joe Biden’s Impeachment, Citing Detrimental Impact on Nation
“I said two years ago, when we had not one but two impeachments, that once we go down this path it incentivizes the other side to do the same thing,” he stated, according to The New York Times. “Impeachment ought to be rare. This is not good for the country.”
Calls for Biden’s impeachment have picked up steam following testimony from Internal Revenue Service (IRS) whistleblowers, and Hunter Biden associate Devon Archer alleging corruption and bribery involving the president and his son.
Prior to Bill Clinton’s impeachment in 1998, no American president had been impeached for 130 years, the outlet noted. Former President Donald Trump’s presidency doubled the total number of impeachments in the history of the country to two during his four-year term.
In the last few years, calls for impeachment and censure, a Congressional penalty that falls just short of expulsion, have increased as political divisiveness has taken hold of the country in and out of the Capitol. The commonality with which such penalties are now threatened and exacted upon political opponents, has diminished the weight of the penalties themselves, some strategists have argued, according to the outlet.
“I think it further deteriorates everyone’s faith in the institution,” Steve Israel, Democratic strategist and former member of the House from New York, told The New York Times. “Everything becomes political theater.”
Israel continued to explain that during his time as a representative for New York, censure was seen as a “last resort” that needed to be “insulated from political whim.”
Israel was joined in his views by Republican Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who argued that Congressional leaders need to work out “political differences and not use tools like impeachment to try to redress our grievances.”
“I don’t think it is a healthy sign for us to be resorting to the ultimate weapon,” Cornyn concluded. “But democracy is messy, and we are demonstrating that every day.”
