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Political payback

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

The incoming Republican House majority is salivating to begin investigations against the Biden administration, with some talking about impeachment. In contrast to the Democratic investigations and two impeachments against Donald Trump--legitimate responses to a president who spurned the rule of law--the GOP's plans are little more than tit-for-tat politics. They should keep in mind how obvious that will be to a nation that denied their party the "red wave" everyone was expecting.

Both parties have weaponized the oversight process to score partisan points. Trump may well have been the most investigated president in history, with scores of inquiries launched in the two years Democrats have controlled Congress. Many Republican partisans clearly believe that fact alone merits some payback, as if the Trump probes were plain old politics. That attitude is part of the blinkered normalization the GOP has always extended to a dangerously abnormal president.

No one can deny Democrats approached their oversight duties with zeal when it came to Trump. But Trump provided justification throughout his tenure, including his suspicious Kremlin coddling, his appalling family separation policy at the southern border, his use of the Justice Department to attack his political enemies and his abuse of his pardon power to reward cronies. And don't forget his politicization of the pandemic and his frontal assault on democracy itself during and after the 2020 election.

In contrast to the GOP's craven impeachment of Bill Clinton for the high crime of lying about sex, Trump's impeachments were about the deadly serious topics of extorting a global ally for political gain and fomenting a physical attack on America's seat of government. There is no rational way for anyone not wearing partisan blinders to conclude they are comparable.

The same can be said for most of what Republicans have in store for President Joe Biden. There are legitimate issues that deserve attention--like his botched withdrawal from Afghanistan--but far more of the ammo Republicans have looks like exploding cigars. Unlike Trump's border controversies, Biden's problems appear to be about poor management, not deliberate inhumanity.

House Republicans are going to do what they're going to do. And, as they did with Bill Clinton's impeachment, they're likely to see their cynical attempts to mountainize these molehills backfire on them politically.

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