Tuesday, November 22, 2022

ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS IS MORE LIKELY TO BE IMPEACHED NEXT YEAR THAN JOE BIDEN

Here it comes:
Appearing with Republicans in El Paso, Texas, House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday called on Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to resign for failing to secure the southern border.

If Mayorkas does not resign, McCarthy warned, House Republicans will investigate him and his department to determine whether to launch impeachment proceedings.
McCarthy isn't just vowing to hold hearings. This is going to turn into a huge stunt:


McCarthy didn't actually say the hearings would start on (or around) January 3, when the new Congress will be sworn in, but -- near the end of the clip -- he did promise hearings at the border.

This is perfect Fox News programming. Fox will cover these hearings gavel to gavel. The hearings will be the right's version of January 6 hearings.

And in a way that makes sense. To the rest of us, January 6 was when we were at risk of losing our country. To Republicans, the presence of undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers in this country means we've lost our country -- to them, if there are undocumented immigrants here, America literally doesn't exist. I find this odd. It's not just that I live in a city full of immigrants of various legal statuses and somehow we still eat burgers and watch American football and American (or at least New York) English is still the primary language. I've also seen this far from the city, where there are also undocumented people but America is still America. The people who think immigrants are causing us to lose our country also think a lot of Americans -- trans people, Blacks, Democrats -- are causing us to lose our country (or I should say causing them to lose their country). Maybe it's just me, but I still think America seems American.

We're told,
McCarthy's remarks come as he has been struggling to lock up support from the 218 Republicans that he needs to win the vote for speaker on the House floor on Jan. 3.

Many conservatives who are withholding support are insisting that House Republicans impeach Mayorkas when they take power next year.
I'm sure the same far-rightists also want him to greenlight an impeachment of President Biden. But McCarthy has probably concluded (or been told by GOP pollsters) that impeaching Mayorkas comes with fewer risks thsn impeaching Biden. Republicans know that Bill Clinton's poll numbers rose when he was impeached. But people outside the GOP base don't think about Mayorkas -- I'm sure most Americans can't even name the homeland security secretary -- so impeaching him is unlikely to rile up Democrats.

Mayorkas said earlier this month that he won't resign. Unless he changes his mind, I think impeachment (and acquittal in the Senate) is inevitable.

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