'They may dig their own grave': Conservative explains how 'wacky investigations' could doom House GOP in 2023

07 December 2022

During the 2022 midterms, countless Democrats warned that if Republicans obtained a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, that majority would pander to the far right and conduct an abundance of overtly partisan investigations. Republicans narrowly flipped the House, and just as Democrats predicted, Rep. James Comer of Kentucky is promising to make in-depth investigations of President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, a top priority.

A Hunter Biden investigation by House Republicans is the type of thing that pundits typically describe as “red meat for the MAGA base.” But reporter Joe Perticone, in an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on December 17, warns that an excess of “frivolous” investigations could damage House Republicans in 2023 — and end up benefitting Democrats in the long run.

“The Republican majority in the House is planning to launch full-throated investigations into Hunter Biden and other political bugbears when the new Congress convenes in January, prompting Democrats on the other side of the Capitol to respond with the powers of their Senate majority,” Perticone explains. “Democrats who spoke with The Bulwark said House Republicans’ stated oversight priorities are nakedly political, but won’t help the GOP’s future electoral efforts. Meanwhile, Senate Democrats are poised to take the baton on what they consider critical investigations, such as that of the House January 6th Committee.”

One of the Democrats The Bulwark interviewed was Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia.

Kaine told The Bulwark, “We may do some of our own work here to tell a more accurate story — that would depend on what the investigation is. But if the House wants to go from a legislative body into a body that’s just trying to get headlines on weird investigations, they may feel like at the end of the day, they can pat themselves on the back because they got on a cable news TV show. But I don’t think they’re going to be impressing their voters.”

The Virginia Democrat went on to say, “I think if we do the work of a legislative body and produce some results, good confirmations, continue to produce bipartisan bills as we have — and the House is known for wacky investigations that aren’t really top of mind to anybody but an extreme view — that will show a real contrast between who the two parties are in ways that will not necessarily be harmful to us.”

Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, another Senate Democrat, argued that the more House Republicans pander to the far right in 2023, the more it could hurt them in the 2024 election.

Murphy told The Bulwark, “I think if they spend the next year talking about Hunter Biden instead of health care, housing and gun violence, we won’t have to do much. They may dig their own grave…. We’ll do oversight (in the Senate) when it’s policy-related, but we’re not going to engage in witch hunts.”

Although Republicans will have a small majority of about six seats in the U.S. House in 2023, Democrats not only held their Senate majority in the midterms — they slightly expanded it when Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia defeated Republican challenger Herschel Walker in a runoff election on Tuesday, December 6. Democrats will have a 51-49 Senate majority in 2023.

Republicans, Perticone notes, “appear to be all in on making the House agenda about Hunter Biden, examining whether arrested January 6th rioters have been treated unfairly by the Justice Department, and more.” But Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah is warning fellow Republicans that politically motivated House investigations could be a distraction from major issues.

The conservative senator told The Bulwark, “I think it’s really hard to know what the politics of a course of action might be in this day and age, to know where our party stands, what our base wants, what independent voters want. But I think you have to do what you think is right, and I think the American people want us to tackle some of the big challenges we have — immigration, inflation, and so forth — and the other things that divert from those priorities, I think, are a waste of time.”

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