The GOP's impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden will "absolutely backfire," according to a Republican strategist.
The GOP has been investigating President Biden over allegations that he intervened and benefited from his son Hunter Biden's business dealings with China and Ukraine while he was vice president under former President Barack Obama, including accusations of taking bribes. The allegations have been denied by the White House and Hunter Biden's lawyers, with Democrats criticizing the GOP's impeachment inquiries for failing to find any meaningful evidence against the president.
While the impeachment inquiry process has been underway for a handful of months, on Tuesday House Speaker Mike Johnson announced that a vote to formalize an inquiry would be held next week.
"The House has no choice if it's going to follow its constitutional responsibility to formally adopt an impeachment inquiry on the floor so that when the subpoenas are challenged in court, we will be at the apex of our constitutional authority," Johnson said in a statement.
US President Joe Biden delivers remarks at Carpenters International Training Center in Las Vegas, Nevada, on December 8, 2023. The GOP’s impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden will “absolutely backfire,” according to a Republican. ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP/Getty Images
In a statement previously sent to Newsweek, the White House dismissed this development and the calls for impeachment from the GOP overall as "sad, pathetic, and a waste of everyone's time."
In addition, House Republicans unveiled a resolution on Thursday to formalize their impeachment inquiry into President Biden as it would help the committees enforce subpoenas and allow the panels' chairmen to designate open hearings in their probe into the Biden family.
In an MSNBC interview on Sunday, 2020 Republican presidential candidate Joe Walsh's former campaign manager, Lucy Caldwell, spoke with host Katie Phang about how the outcome of the impeachment inquiry effort could impact the GOP.
Newsweek has reached out to the White House and James Comer, House Oversight and Accountability Committee chairman for comment via email.
"House Republicans introduced a resolution on Thursday to authorize an inquiry into President Joe Biden. The House Rules committee is to take it up on Tuesday in a couple of days. So the earliest that any vote could happen is Wednesday. Do you think this move will backfire for Republicans going into 2024?" Phang asked.
"I think it will backfire. Frankly, this is just a political reality of an impeachment inquiry in an election year. impeachment inquiries into an incumbent president tend to cause base voters to rally around the incumbent president. This is obviously a ridiculous impeachment inquiry that is baseless from we can tell. But we do have a recent history for this," Caldwell said.
Caldwell continued by explaining that Democratic voters will see this effort as a "wake up call" going into the 2024 elections, just as how Republican voters "warmed" up to former president Donald Trump in the 2020 election amid his impeachment inquiries.
"In 2020, in the impeachment inquiries leading up to it all of 2019 and 2020 leading up to the Republican primary in 2020 and the general election—that actually warmed Republican voters to Trump. And so I think that when Democratic base voters, including those who voted for Biden last cycle, when they see the action that the house is taking, it may be another wake up call to say, 'hey, you might now feel so psyched about what is going on but you're not going to be psyched about what these guys are doing,'" Caldwell said.
"So I think it will absolutely backfire on the Republican party. Plus they have a very core base of MAGA right now. So they're trying to thread the needle of keeping the MAGA wackos happy. But it's going to be a challenge and I see it actually working out politically positively for Biden, even though it's very unfortunate for our democracy that this is happening," Caldwell added.
fr0z3nf1r3 on December 10th, 2023 at 23:09 UTC »
Remember when Donald Trump was actually impeached for something he actually did and then nothing happened? Twice?
Take that and subtract the "actually did" and "actually impeached" and "something" and you have this.
This is such a braindead thing to focus on. Even if they are somehow successful, nothing will happen. This is the POLITICAL THEATER that they complain Democrats are doing even though they don't have evidence and confessions to base it on. It's fiction.
Juventus19 on December 10th, 2023 at 22:24 UTC »
They have a majority of what, 3 votes now? Biden-district GOP members are gonna have a hard sell of voting for impeachment to their voters. Completely suicidal move
Noizyninjaz on December 10th, 2023 at 21:52 UTC »
It's not changing a single vote. People don't even know why he's being investigated.