How a botched impeachment laid bare a GOP House that cannot function

Once Mike Johnson’s speakership was merely implausible. Now it looks incompetent.

The rookie Republican leader – already struggling to wield a tiny, extreme and malfunctioning majority – suffered a spectacular embarrassment on Tuesday night in a failed vote to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

The drama undermined what was already a questionable case for impeachment – more over policy disagreements than the constitutional standard of treason, bribery or high crimes and misdemeanors.

And it told a story of a House in utter disarray.

Setting up a high-stakes, televised tour de force for the impeachment of a Cabinet official for only the second time in history was a daring act. But failing to actually pull it off by a couple of votes broke the cardinal rule of not putting a bill on the floor until the numbers are rock solid.

The result was a debacle that made the House leadership a laughing stock.

The failure played into the hands of a White House that delights in portraying Johnson’s majority as an engine for Donald Trump’s political stunts more than a serious governing force. And it raised serious doubts over the GOP’s capacity to pull off another politized maneuver designed to please the former president – an impeachment of President Joe Biden.

The malpractice of Johnson’s impeachment team was encapsulated by Democrats outmaneuvering them to bring a shoeless Rep. Al Green, who was recovering from surgery, to the chamber in a wheelchair to cast a dramatic vote.

Moments after the Mayorkas impeachment failed, Johnson was also unable to pass a standalone bill containing billions of dollars in aid for Israel. It was another busted gambit to jam the Biden administration. The president had threatened to…