House conservatives want their party to go big on impeachment next year. Across the Capitol, Senate Republicans on their would-be jury are not ready to convict.
While House GOP leaders feel intense pressure from their Donald Trump-aligned base and colleagues to impeach President Joe Biden or a top member of his Cabinet, many of the party’s senators want nothing to do with it. In fact, some Republican senators are openly signaling that even if impeachment managed to squeak through the House, it would quickly die in their chamber — and not just at the hands of the Democratic majority.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a close ally of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, said he “hadn’t really given any thought” to impeaching Biden or a Cabinet official like Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, whom Kevin McCarthy singled out last month as a primary target of future House investigations. Cornyn said he hasn’t seen any actions that meet the bar for an impeachable offense: “Not really, no.”
And Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, the only GOP senator to twice convict former President Trump, put it more bluntly: “Someone has to commit a high crime or misdemeanor for that to be a valid inquiry. I haven’t seen any accusation of that nature whatsoever. There are a lot of things I disagree with … but that doesn’t rise to impeachment.”
