Analyst: Retribution is a way of life in Washington

The Republicans taking control of the US Congress in 2022 might be a final blow to the Democrats’ chances in 2024, says American political analyst and activist Myles Hoenig.

Hoenig, a former Green Party candidate for Congress, made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Tuesday while commenting on a report which shows US President Joe Biden's administration and allies are foreseeing a possible scenario after midterm elections in which Republicans take the House of Representatives, the Senate, or both, and launch a series of investigations and attempts to impeach Biden.

Lawmakers, congressional staffers and strategists predict a number of investigations targeting the Biden administration, particularly if Republicans loyal to former US President Donald Trump gain important committee seats in Congress, according to Reuters.

“The argument being made to not change the filibuster rule of requiring 60 votes, not just a majority, is to prevent the Republicans, when they hold office, from revamping our entire democratic process, as extremely flawed and nearly invisible as it already is. But there are many ways a party in power can exercise real power if they want to achieve the legislation they want,” Hoenig said.

“The US has been going into an expedited rightward slide since Ronald Reagan, supported by every president since, especially Bill Clinton and aided by Obama. Even when out of power, the Republicans usually get what they want, mostly because the Democrats think they have the high moral ground but are afraid or incapable of exerting real political strength. And when they do something grand, like Obamacare, they think they’ve achieved an FDR milestone, when in fact they just borrow from the right-wing, Heritage Foundation playbook. It is true that if and when the Republicans take over in 2022 we will see the absolute erosion of civil liberties, women’s rights, voting rights, environmental degradation, and all the other ‘evils’ that the Democrats pretend to champion,” he added.

Biden and allies worry about impeachment, probes after midterms: Report

Lawmakers, congressional staffers and strategists predict a slew of investigations targeting the Biden administration, particularly if Republicans loyal to Trump gain important committee seats in Congress.

“One power that the new Congressional administration will have is control of committees. This is how they will set the agenda for the next several years. And as they head committees, the Democrats have every right to fear retribution in the form of hearings and possible impeachment. But even impeachment won’t have the onus it once did. After all, once the Nobel Committee awarded both Henry Kissinger and later Obama the Peace Prize, and ignored real heroes like Julian Assange and others like him, the prestige of having such a prize has diminished greatly. Impeachment will become a quadrennial event and as exciting as the next Olympics,” the analyst noted.

“Politics in the US is usually based on tit for tat. Republicans held hearings for Clinton over Benghazi (and came up empty) and the Democrats concocted Russiagate and tied up the Trump administration for its entirety as well as give it an argument for claiming ‘fake news'. But even with the different parties’ hearings, they were careful so as not to implicate themselves,” he said.

“With Benghazi it dealt primarily with the attack on the embassy, not how our foreign policy used Libya as a conduit to arm ISIS (Daesh) in Syria, something both parties supported.  Impeachment was on how Trump tried to bribe a foreign leader to get dirt on his opponent, not on anything related to emoluments and real financial corruption within his administration. Both sides play for the cameras and play it safe for themselves. Imagine if either party abided by international law and turned in the other party’s leadership for war crimes. We’d have no one running the federal government,” he said.

“The one issue that will be Biden’s albatross is whether he was directly involved in his son Hunter’s financial dealings with the Ukrainian oil company, Burisma. Everyone loves this kind of scandal. The other ‘scandal’, how we pulled out of Afghanistan, could easily backfire on the Republicans as it took a Republican administration under Trump to actually put in motion the end to our war against the Afghan people,” he stated.

“There is no doubt that the Republicans taking control of Congress in 2022 would be a major headache, and maybe even a final blow, to the Democrats’ chances in 2024. But in a way, they deserve each other. The real problem is what they will do to the American people if they wield such enormous power,” he concluded.

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