Even before they had taken control of the House, House Republicans were promising payback.
Using the powers of the various congressional committees that they would soon take over, ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus members, led by Reps. James Comer of Kentucky and Jim Jordan of Ohio, were pledging investigations of everything: the Biden family’s business practices, Hunter Biden’s laptop, the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, alleged government bias against conservatives, and the Biden administration’s border policies.
But so far, these investigations seem to be flopping. They don’t seem to be sticking in the public consciousness. They haven’t uncovered page one news about Hunter Biden’s laptop, or about the origins of Covid-19, or about a supposed government conspiracy to silence conservatives on Twitter. A bit more than two months into Republican control of the House, plenty of these investigations are well underway. Hearings have been held, letters sent, witnesses summoned, and hours spent appearing on Fox News.
The House GOP investigations also aren’t making the president’s reelection campaign untenable — many Democratic operatives suspected that was their goal — and they don’t seem to be damaging the president as many Republicans had hoped.
Of course, it’s still early, and in the more than year and a half before the 2024 presidential election, Republicans could still weaponize their committee investigations into better political cudgels. A handful of additional hearings are on the calendar, but more remain unscheduled. If Republicans had hoped to establish the same kind of cloud of confusion and innuendo that they did during the Obama years to tarnish the president’s reputation and hurt Hillary Clinton’s presidential hopes, they have yet to achieve that with Biden.
New polling provided to Vox by the progressive research group Navigator further demonstrates this trend: Half of American adults believe Republicans are…
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