House Republicans are about to begin their half-baked impeachment inquiry of Joe Biden

The House of Representatives has a mountain of work that it needs to complete. After buying itself some time by passing a “laddered” continuing resolution wherein half of the spending bills expire in January and the other in February, the House is still not on track to pass spending bills. The package it passed to aid Israel was little more than a right-wing gimmick that would have stripped funding from the IRS, something it knew Democrats in the Senate would never agree to passing.

But instead of focusing on the business of governing, the House will go down another boodoggle and begin the process of opening up an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. This is, of course, a continuation of the boondoggle attempt to impeach the sitting president that began during former speaker Kevin McCarthy’s tenure, which in and of itself was an attempt to appeal to the most extreme factions in the House Republican conference.

On Tuesday, the House Rules Committee will hold a hearing on the resolution to begin the impeachment inquiry. But the fact remains that the House Republican conference so far has not definitively made the case to the American public that any of Mr Biden’s actions have amounted to the level of a crime worthy of impeachment.

That matters because, despite what proponents will say, impeachment is and always will be a political act. The public needs to at least believe that the president committed a crime.

When then-House speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the first impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump, more than half of Americans did not support impeaching the 45th president but that quickly changed and from October 2019 onward; a plurality supported impeaching him for his attempt to have Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky investigate Mr Biden’s son Hunter in exchange for aid to Ukraine. After the January 6 riot, either a plurality or majority of Americans said Mr Trump deserved to be convicted during his second impeachment.

Conversely, when the American public doesn’t think that an impeachment is legitimate, the party that leads the impeachment suffers consequences. In the 1998 midterm, Republicans actually lost seats in the House after the failed impeachment trial of Bill Clinton and Republicans in the Senate lost as many seats as they won.

That should worry Republicans in swing districts as the impeachment inquiry goes forward. Friend of the Inside Washington newsletter Cami Mondeaux of The Washington Examiner reported on a poll from the Democratic polling outlet Public Policy Polling which showed that districts that voted for Mr Biden are less likely to back Republicans who support an impeachment inquiry.

That should worry Republicans, who only have an eight-seat majority, especially as Democrats and Republicans gear up for a knock-out brawl to flip New York’s 3rd congressional district after disgraced former congressman George Santos’s expulsion.

This is to say nothing about the limited appetite for an impeachment trial in the Senate, where two-thirds of senators would need to vote for a conviction to remove Mr Biden. Sen Mitt Romney (R-UT) told Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker on Sunday that he had not seen any evidence that Mr Biden – who was part of the presidential ticket that beat him when he ran for the White House in 2012 – had committed crimes worthy of impeachment.

This is likely to say nothing of Sen Mitch McConnell, Mr Biden’s longtime friend and ally, who would likely fear losing Republican Senate seats and preventing him from becoming majority leader one last time.

But so far, Republicans, led by House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, have yet to convince Americans that Mr Biden deserves to be impeached. On Friday, Mr Comer went back and forth with CNN’s Jake Tapper and nonsensically said that the Justice Department indicted Hunter Biden to protect him from a congressional investigation. Watch the clip here. It does not go well for Mr Comer.

The younger Mr Biden’s indictment certainly does him no favours. But as of right now, House Republicans have not convinced enough Americans that Hunter Biden’s wrongdoing amounted to any wrongdoing by the president.

At the same time, Mr Comer and Mr Johnson have few options. Members of their conference like Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) have champed at the bit to impeach Mr Biden, and Mr Johnson will already have hell to pay the moment that he winds up having to pass spending bills next year that will inevitably anger his conference.

Similarly, if the Senate miraculously strikes a deal on Ukraine funding in exchange for restricting legal immigration, it will be far more limited in scope compared to what the House wants and Mr Johnson could face a revolt. Remember, the House has not changed the single-member motion to vacate that doomed Mr McCarthy.

As of right now, Mr Johnson has elected to try and continue on his normal path of trying to please everyone in his conference and avoiding tough decisions, even if it leads to more pain for the GOP down the line.