Axios: Even Some Dems Getting Tired of ‘Performative Bull****’ Impeachments

Aren’t we all? And more to the point … didn’t Donald Trump’s stunning and overwhelming electoral victory demonstrate it?

At least a few Democrats in Congress have done that math, even as their colleagues attempt to trot out yet another impeachment effort. This time, House Democrats have taken aim at Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whose full-bore enforcement efforts have blue-state Democrats howling. Rumors of other impeachment targets among Trump’s Cabinet have percolated for months, but the push to impeach Noem have picked up real momentum in the Democrats’ efforts to demonize immigration enforcement agents, and Noem serves as a handy proxy for Trump regarding his central domestic policy.

However, as Axios reports, some House Democrats have had enough with “performative bulls***”:

Articles of impeachment targeting Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem are garnering support from House Democrats at a rapid clip. Not all the party’s lawmakers are happy about it. …

What we’re hearing: Granted anonymity to offer candid thoughts on the matter, several centrist lawmakers went much further in criticizing the Noem impeachment push.

• One House Democrat told Axios: “There’s a frustration with all these impeachments. Now, Noem is just soup du jour. So … yes, there is a general frustration with us.”
• “It’s all performative bullsh*t,” the lawmaker added. “And I think at some point people want to focus on affordability and not performative bullsh*t.”
• “My thought on this is that I’m absolutely not doing this. It’s stupid,” another told Axios, expressing shock that so many of their colleagues signed on and adding that “affordability is the issue.”

Not only is it “performative bulls***,” it’s stupid performative bulls***. In the first place, what would be the grounds for impeachment? Noem is enforcing existing immigration law, and ICE is detaining and deporting illegal aliens. If Congress objects to the enforcement of existing statutes, it has the power to change the law. Until that happens, Homeland Security has the authority – and technically the responsibility – to enforce the laws that Congress has duly enacted. Failure to do so would amount to dereliction of duty, which truly would constitute an impeachable offense. Some Republicans argued that Alejandro Mayorkas should have been impeached for that very situation.

Next: what would happen even if Hakeem Jeffries managed to force a vote on impeachment? Republicans still control the House, although the majority is now wafer-thin. Even Thomas Massie is unlikely to join an impeachment effort, though, and some House Democrats are already pushing back in public as well as on background. Susie Lee (D-NV) has already told the author of the articles, Robin Kelly (D-IL), to shelve the idea. Assuming this could pass the House, though, the chances of getting 67 votes in the Senate for removal are roughly similar to Jeffries crossing the aisle and becoming Majority Whip next week. 

As for the moral value of impeachment, Democrats should reflect on their two impeachments of Trump, several attempts to imprison him, the lawfare that attempted to bankrupt him, and two years of using all of the above to argue that Trump was “disqualified” for office. How did that go over with voters? 

Finally, all this does is to highlight – again – the disconnect between Democrats and the general electorate. Immigration enforcement helped lift Trump to only the second non-consecutive presidential term in American history, and that enforcement remains popular with voters. As I wrote last week, the numbers in the longitudinal Harvard-Harris CAPS poll have hardly budged over the last year of strict enforcement. Its latest iteration shows that immigration enforcement continues to rank third behind economic issues and health care among about twenty different issue sets polled. In the same poll, 80% of respondents want illegal aliens who commit other crimes deported, 70% want the border closed, amd 54% want all illegal immigrants deported regardless of other criminal activity. Trump gets his second-highest approval rating from voters on the issue at 49%, just a single point behind “returning America to its values.”

As gestures go, impeaching Noem for enforcing existing immigration law in a way that voters support is about as stupid and futile as it comes. A few House Democrats are starting to figure it out. The rest still want to conduct “performative bull***,” but they’re not performing for the voters. They’re performing for the radicals and the hard-Left money behind them. 

Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump, illegal immigration into our great country has virtually stopped. Despite the radical left’s lies, new legislation wasn’t needed to secure our border, just a new president.

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