New York Republican Rep. Claudia Tenney is calling for President Joe Biden to be impeached from office (Martin Walsh, Conservative Brief).
If you are expecting a conservative parroting of the above-cited article and support of impeaching President Biden, or perhaps a vigorous defense of Joe Biden then you are about to be disappointed.
I confess that I had similar expectations when I read the article given that it was an article from an admittedly conservative media website. The article was labeled as Opinion and I was expecting Martin Walsh to be expressing his conservative opinion on the topic, refreshingly he didn’t. If I had come across an Opinion article on a more Liberal or Progressive media website I would have expected an Opinion by the author to reflect a more Liberal or Progressive Opinion. Such is the nature of the media these days.
Impeachment insofar as the President of the United States is concerned is a big fat nothing burger with a side of partisan nonsense. It does not matter if the President is actually guilty of anything or not, it’s a colossal waste of time.
There have been a total of four presidential impeachments, the first was Andrew Johnson in 1868. Then Bill Clinton and finally Donald Trump who has the distinction of being the only President to be impeached twice. President Andrew Johnson was the only one to ever come close to being convicted and removed from office.
To be clear Impeachment is analogous to an indictment, it is not removal. The House of Representatives impeaches and the Senate tries and either convicts or acquits. A conviction will result in the removal of the impeached from office.
Since 1797 the House of Representatives use the power of impeachment 21 times. Here are the results:
- One US Senator in 1797; was dismissed for want of jurisdiction
- Secretary of War in 1876, acquitted
- 15 Federal Judges, 8 convictions 4 acquittals 3 resignations
- President Andrew Johson in 1768, acquitted
- President William Jefferson Clinton in 1998, acquitted
- President Donald Trump in 2019 and 2021, acquitted both times
Overall this does not seem like that big of a deal there were eight convictions after all, and that is true. Plus the three resignations would have probably resulted in a conviction boosting the conviction rate to about 50 percent. However, every single conviction and every single resignation that might have been a conviction was a federal judge, and not one Presidential Impeachment has resulted in a conviction.
You might think, so what, it doesn’t mean a thing. That is where you would be wrong, I mention the other impeachments for the sake of thoroughness on the topic. But if you recall I previously said that insofar as the President of the United States is concerned, impeachment is a big fat nothing burger with a side of partisan nonsense. I have been witness to three of the four Presidential Impeachments, and by witness I mean I have been alive and a registered voter, and I have followed the news on the impeachments of Clinton and Trump.
I can say with certainty the impeachment process is largely a partisan affair, Clinton was impeached by the Republican-controlled House, and Trump was impeached by the Democrat-controlled House. Because the Constitution requires a two-thirds majority to convict in the Senate trial none of the parties had a 67-vote majority. All of the votes were largely along party lines with a few members siding with the opposition. Statistically speaking it is easier to remove a federal judge from the bench than it is to remove a President from office. Just impeaching a president is a chore in itself.
Some Impeachment Efforts source
- Nixon was subject to impeachment but resigned
- James Buchanon and Andrew Johnson were investigated but not impeached
- Thomas Jefferson and John Tyler were subjected to impeachment but the house voted against impeachment by a high majority
- Grant, Cleaveland, Hoover, Truman, Regan, Bush Sr and Jr, and Biden all had impeachment resolutions introduced but never voted on
- LBJ and Obama had impeachment resolutions but died in committee
Politically I can’t stand Biden, I couldn’t stand Trump either; however, facts are facts, and the Democrats did not have the votes to remove Trump, and the Republicans do not have the votes to remove Biden. They tried to impeach Biden after his inauguration and it failed because they did not have the votes in the House. What’s more, is that I believe that both parties knew they didn’t have the votes and their efforts were doomed to fail, but they did it anyway. This is utter arrogance on part of our Representatives in Congress and it is unacceptable. They may as well be shouting back and forth, “My President can beat up your President!”
Grow up and stop acting like schoolyard children.