Impeachment is usually the wrong tool

On its second try, the (bare, and shrinking) Republican House majority managed to pass a vote to impeach our reality-challenged Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas.

The vote was 214-213, the charge was not enforcing immigration law and breaching public trust, and the case will now move to the Democrat-controlled Senate.

Where it will fail to achieve the required 67 votes, exactly as happened in the two impeachments against President Donald J. Trump, when the Senate was led by Republicans.

I think Mayorkas is an incorrigible boob, but why bother, when the outcome will result in a predictable failure to convict?

I asked the same question when the Democrats went after Trump, another incorrigible boob.

They said they felt morally compelled to go after what they considered to be a vile character. They had to take a stand.

I can understand that, but their failure to convict led directly to Trump proclaiming, inaccurately, that he had been found “innocent.”

It was a waste of time and money.

Mayorkas is a deluded stiff, who has insisted — contrary to facts — that the border was closed, but he was hired by the President of the United States, and if anyone is guilty of ignoring immigration law it is President Joe Biden.

If anyone should be impeached on immigration grounds, it should be Biden — but I am not endorsing that.

Biden lost my vote last time almost exclusively because of his harebrained border policy, but even that does not rise to the “high crimes and misdemeanors” required by the Constitution to remove a President.

Impeachment must be reserved for the most serious crimes against the American people. It should not be used as a political tool.

My belief is that impeachment must be reserved for actual crimes, and it must be bipartisan, coming as an expression of the will of the American people, not of a political party.

That’s a high standard, and deliberately so. 

The other, more normal way, to get rid of a President is through the ballot box. 

The American people will get their chance on Tuesday, Nov. 5.