Republicans have openly admitted that their efforts to impeach President Joe Biden — which will begin in earnest this week as House members return to DC from summer break — are in bad faith. They don’t just want to tarnish Biden. They want to tarnish the impeachment process itself.
This argument is pretty much on the order of shaming a whore; Or wrestling with a pig.
Nixon resigned before he could be impeached, so shamed was he by the mere idea. And there were credible grounds for criminal charges against him, which is why Ford pardoned Nixon (still inexcusable, IMHO).
Clinton was impeached for misdescribing a blow jib under oath .I’m pretty sure that tarnished the impeachment process. Especially since the Senate refused, by a wide margin, to convict.
Trump was impeached twice, on credible grounds (the second, arguably, partly the basis for the D. C. charges. Both times, on party lines, the Senate refused to convict.
If memory serves, Andrew Johnson escaped conviction by one vote. So it's not like impeachment is getting more respect as time passes.
The impeachment process was tarnished, IOW, long before the current crop of crazies took over the House. Newt Gingrich paved that road to tell 30 years ago. One could argue that Clinton contributed by not being cowed by Newt; but Bill knew Newt didn't have the votes, and that he had the Presidential seal and the Presidential podium.
Nixon knew he was done for. It was a different time. Even though Nixon won on his "secret plan to end the war," and the hippies lost with McGovern, the electorate was still far more to the left than it is today. Or at least they were just sick and tire of the quagmire of Vietnam. That lesson persists today. The lesson that impeachment is damned serious stuff and you don't screw around with it (the Watergate hearings were long and complex and pretty damned convincing, as such things go)? Not so much.
It's not the abuse of the impeachment power that is tarnishing it. It's politics.
Ain't that always the way?
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