Many House Republicans dread what they believe will be an inevitable vote to impeach President Joe Biden at the conclusion of the just-announced inquiry.
House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) insisted the inquiry would go "wherever the evidence takes us," but skeptical GOP lawmakers believe politics will make a full vote unavoidable, reported The Daily Beast.
“When he used the term impeachment inquiry… now we have set expectations with the activists who are expecting an impeachment,” said Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO), one of the most outspoken GOP skeptics. “When you start talking about the I word, the activists get fired up.”
“It doesn’t matter what the facts are,” Buck added. “They want us to move forward.”
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Fellow Reps. French Hill (R-AR), and Dave Joyce (R-OH) both said over the weekend they don't believe that investigations led by House Oversight Committee, led by Rep. James Comer (R-KY), had turned up enough evidence to justify an impeachment inquiry, while others insisted they had not made up their minds to vote on impeachment no matter what they found.
“If there’s no there there, then there’s no there there,” said Rep. Kevin Hern (R-OK), chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee. “Then we say ‘Hey, you were right, we were wrong, let’s move on down the road.’”
Hern and archconservative Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC) downplayed the pressure the GOP base was putting on McCarthy toward impeachment.
“Most of my base voters that I encounter want me to do something up here, but nobody’s ever told me you just do it, regardless what the facts are -- I haven’t heard it that way,” Bishop said. “They’d like to have an explanation why nobody’s doing anything, apparently, about a number of things, from their perspective.”
However, Hern was confident the inquiry would turn up revelations about the president and his son Hunter Biden worthy of impeachment and, ultimately, a Senate conviction.
“You have to make it so damning that Democrat senators would go to Biden and say, ‘I can’t support this,’ just like Howard Baker did to President Nixon back in the day,” Hern said.
Buck was doubtful of that particular outcome in a potential Senate trial.
“It’d be a joke!” Buck said. “What evidence do you present that there is a connection between Hunter Biden’s activities and Joe Biden at this point? It’s a joke.”