The politics of the swiftly dismissed Mayorkas impeachment trial

In early February, congressional Republicans made a conspicuous choice. They decided to kill a bipartisan Senate deal that included tough border security measures. Instead, they pressed forward with what was essentially a messaging exercise: impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

The confluence of events was telling. Even by the accounts of several Republicans, their party preferred attacking the Biden administration over the crisis at the border to actually doing something about it.

Two months later, Mayorkas’s impeachment is dead. The Senate dispatched with the trial quickly Wednesday afternoon shortly after finally receiving a pair of articles of impeachment against him from the House.

It was predictable that the Democratic-controlled Senate would do this. But Republicans hope it will, at the very least, make Democrats look bad — as if they aren’t interested in holding accountable a man who Republicans say is responsible for the chaotic border.

And will it make the Democrats look bad?

There is no question the border is a major liability for President Biden. Mayorkas isn’t exactly a sympathetic character, either; a recent poll showed that independents dislike him by a 2-to-1 margin.

But the GOP’s impeachment effort was troubled from the start — in ways that sharply undercut the claim that Democrats are derelict in shrugging off an impeachment trial. Even many Republicans said Mayorkas’s actions weren’t impeachable, and the party wound up lacking complete unity in both chambers in historic ways.

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