On Friday morning, George Santos was still a member of Congress. By Monday, he was a member of Cameo. The expulsion of Santos, a serial liar and subject of a 23-count federal indictment, could’ve given Republican leadership a chance to take a sliver of moral high ground. (Santos, by the way, has pleaded not guilty.) And yet Speaker Mike Johnson told his colleagues to “vote their conscience” and didn’t whip votes either way. Of course it’s worth wondering if Johnson, neophyte when it comes to leadership, could actually whip a vote since he’s had some problems passing other bills since his unlikely ascension. 

Regardless, the top rung of GOP leadership—Johnson, Steve Scalise, Elise Stefanik, and Tom Emmer—all voted against expelling Santos, who, after losing his seat, spent the weekend taking aim at former New York congressional colleagues like Jamaal Bowman, Mike Lawler, and Nicole Malliotakis on X before being used by John Fetterman to troll Bob Menendez.

The ugly resolution of the Santos saga could’ve been the biggest stain on the GOP this month—that is, if the House wasn’t still pursuing its evidence-free (and just embarrassing) Joe Biden impeachment crusade. The GOP’s latest attempt to portray Biden—as opposed to, say, Donald Trump—as corrupt comes in the form of a 78-page report, which Politico already noted Tuesday morning “contains no smoking gun.” Just like when Kevin McCarthy was running the show, the GOP’s case is more about high vibes and misdemeanors (or lack thereof).

But Johnson doesn’t just serve at the pleasure of Matt Gaetz and his band of arsonists who took out McCarthy, but at the pleasure of King Trump. And there’s only one thing the quadruply indicted former president wants besides not going to jail, and that’s to muddy the waters enough so that he can get reelected as the 47th president of the United States. And all he wants for Christmas is Biden’s impeachment.

Texas Republican Troy Nehls, who—surprise!—voted against impeaching Trump for inciting the January 6 insurrection, acknowledged that targeting Biden is good politics as it’ll give Trump “a little bit of ammo to fire back” by pointing out that Biden was also impeached. Johnson, too, has reportedly suggested behind closed doors that there’s a political rationale for impeaching Biden.

While Nancy Pelosi made a point of protecting her vulnerable members, and even McCarthy launched an impeachment inquiry without a full House vote, Johnson seems to have no such anxiety about forcing Republicans in Biden-won districts to formally vote for it. Some appear ready to do so: Punchbowl News reported last week that four vulnerable republicans—Marc Molinaro, Nick LaLota, Brandon Williams, and John Duarte, who won his 2022 California race by less than 1,000 votes—support opening an impeachment inquiry. Duarte told Axios’s Andrew Solender that the vote will be “very soon…I think if we have the votes, it’ll be by the end of the year.” 

This past weekend, Johnson and Stefanik went on Trump’s favorite morning show, Fox & Friends, and indicated that his Christmas gift would be under the tree. Impeachment, according to Johnson, had “become a necessary step.”

How better to celebrate the inability to pass a spending bill, than with impeaching a president in the hopes of satiating your autocratic front-runner? 

Since we’re the United States of Amnesia, no one seems to remember what happened the last time Republicans tried to impeach a Democratic president. So I called Democratic strategist James Carville, who told me, “I’m begging House Republicans to go through with this and have public hearings, and I promise them it will end very poorly for them.” Shortly after launching the impeachment of Bill Clinton, in October 1998, Republicans performed poorly in the midterms despite enjoying the traditional advantage of being the party of the White House, losing five House seats and making no Senate gains. This defeat created an impeachment hesitation in Washington that today’s GOP’s burn-it-all-down caucus seems to have forgotten, or perhaps, doesn’t care about.

The problem Republicans have can be best summed up by Democratic congressman Ro Khanna, who emailed me, “After weeks without a House Speaker, Republicans should be focused on passing legislation to bring down the cost of food, of gas, and of child care. Instead, their attention is once again on impeaching President Biden. The problem is they have no evidence that the president has done anything wrong. They’ve been looking and they haven’t come up with anything. So this is not a serious effort, it’s a cynical, political stunt to distract from the disarray their caucus is in.”