Speaker Mike Johnson is about to take a risky bet on impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
While GOP leaders have telegraphed confidence that they will have the numbers to impeach Mayorkas in a Tuesday vote, they can only afford to lose three Republicans at full attendance. And they still have several holdouts and a stated “no” vote from retiring Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), as leadership allies publicly warn the vote could get pulled at the last second.
“Having a policy difference, having a bad administrator, having incompetence, doesn’t cut it. I think if you made incompetence the standard, you wouldn’t have anybody left in Congress,” Buck said in a brief interview.
If Johnson and his leadership team successfully whip up enough votes to recommend booting Mayorkas, it’ll amount to a small win by keeping his right flank happy. But a failure would become another bullet point in conservatives’ ongoing list of complaints about Republican leaders’ lack of accomplishments — massively denting their prospects of success in the more high-stakes push to impeach President Joe Biden.
And their margin for error could get worse, given a looming special election for expelled GOP Rep. George Santos’ seat. If Democrats flip the seat, Johnson could only lose two Republicans at most on any Democratic-opposed legislation, an almost impossible margin to work in a chamber that sees frequent absences.
House Republicans have put in months of behind-the-scenes work to try to shore up GOP support for impeaching a Cabinet secretary for the first time since 1876. Johnson, other members........