'Nakedly partisan charade': Marjorie Taylor Greene’s impeachment push predicted to backfire on GOP

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's drive to impeach several members of the government is going to backfire on the GOP, Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent predicted Tuesday.

Greene last month introduced articles of impeachment against President Joe Biden and four executive branch appointees including Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

The far-right Republican from Georgia last week, while addressing the debt ceiling debate, suggested during an exchange with reporters that Mayorkas is the most vulnerable impeachment target.

Sargent argues that Greene’s efforts don’t serve her party well.

“This will blow back on the GOP,” Sargent writes. “Greene’s linking of Mayorkas to the unrelated debt limit vote has handed Democrats a weapon against the coming impeachment circus. For vulnerable House Republicans who want to tout their support for the bipartisan debt deal, the last thing they need is a nakedly partisan charade led by Greene.”

Sargent writes that Greene and some fellow Republicans developed a plan to impeach Mayorkas noting that they were “giddily anticipating a large spike in migrant arrivals at the southern border when a covid-era restriction on asylum-seeking, known as Title 42, was lifted last month. Greene even advised House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) that this would be a good hook for impeachment.”

The large spike never materialized, Sargent notes, citing a Tuesday DHS announcement that border crossings had fallen compared to the period before Title 42 ended.

Sargent writes that “Amusingly, the failure of this border surge to materialize has apparently intensified the GOP drive to impeach Mayorkas,” noting that the Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing Wednesday in which Mayorkas critic Seven Bradbury of the Heritage Foundation is expected to appear.

GOP pollster Whit Ayres told The Post that it’s unclear whether Republicans can deliver evidence of impeachable offenses, noting that in the absence of such evidence, this initiative is likely to backfire.

“If they’ve got no hard evidence,” Ayres said, “it will just drive an image of the Republican Party that is very much at odds with the kind of party that can win elections in swing states or win a majority of the electorate in a presidential campaign.”