GOP Shoots Itself in the Foot In First Post-Election Test

Republicans learned exactly nothing from the most brutal midterm election defeat in decades as they opt to protect Pete Hegseth.

If you were wondering whether Republicans had learned anything from last week’s midterms, whether they’d heard voters and might change their behavior, we now have the answer.

It’s a hard no.

The House voted 211 to 204 to refer Rep. Thomas Massie’s articles of impeachment against Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to the House Judiciary Committee, where it will languish for the remainder of this Congress. Massie was the only Republican to vote in favor of advancing the articles. Every other Republican voted to make it go away.

Massie introduced the articles of impeachment well before the midterms, prompting speaker Mike Johnson to call an early recess to avoid a vote. That absolved vulnerable Republicans from going on record with a potentially unpopular vote so close to their midterm elections. Ultimately, it didn’t matter, as voters made it crystal clear just how angry they are about the war in Iran, and Republicans suffered the consequences anyway. Still, when Massie re-introduced the articles of impeachment as soon as congress returned, Republicans did the most cowardly thing possible by voting to effectively shelve the issue.

And let’s not forget what the issue is. Massie filed eight articles of impeachment: 34 pages accusing Hegseth of carrying out unlawful orders in the Iran war, of keeping troops deployed without congressional authorization, and of abusing his office in the operation that captured Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. The House passed a war powers resolution in June ordering the removal of troops from Iran, and yet, here we still are.

Am I surprised each and every Republican voted this way? Not really. The only outlier, Massie, was punished for the crime of attempting to uphold the constitution with a primary defeat by a Trump-backed challenger. That was a cautionary tale to everyone else in the party and they clearly got the message.

It was, however, decidedly the wrong one. Because voters sent a much clearer and more coherent message of their own. A historic blue wave delivered a Democratic majority in both chambers of Congress that would have been previously unthinkable, driven by record high gas prices and a bone-deep exhaustion with the war that caused it. And what did Republicans do with that information? Turn around and vote to protect the man responsible for it.

This gives us a pretty good preview of how Republicans plan to behave in the waning days of their majority: protect the people in power. Refuse to acknowledge reality. Continue to ignore the will of the people.

All this may serve to accomplish is to buy Hegseth a little bit of time. Because with any luck, a Democratic majority will mean a new era of accountability. The single most important thing we can do now is restore Americans’ faith in government. And that starts with holding people to account for corrupt behavior - which is exactly what Republicans failed to do here. As far as I’m concerned, that makes them complicit.