The Democratic Survival Guide to the New House GOP Majority
Hakeem Jeffries, a Democratic senator from New York, is telling his fellow Democrats that the White House is their client and the House Democrats are their defense attorney. The Biden administration has assembled a group of communications, legal and legislative specialists to map the likely routes of GOP oversight. They will also hire more. Ashley Etienne led House Democrats’ impeachment war room, has dispatched top protégés to communications posts at federal agencies Republicans have indicated they’re eager to interrogate: the Departments of Homeland Security (over border security), Health and Human Services (over COVID), and Education (over woke indoctrination).
Democrats are well-versed in the plans of Republicans to use their control of Congress. GOP lawmakers have been saying it for months. Rep. Jim Jordan (R. Ohio), soon to be the House Judiciary Committee’s chair, said Republicans would use their oversight powers to “frame up the 2024 race” — a race they “need to make sure that [Trump] wins.” Incoming House Oversight chairman Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), meanwhile, vowed the intensity of investigations under his committee would “prevent Joe Biden from running” for another term.
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The vibes harken back to a not-so-distant era on Capitol Hill, when the Tea Party surge wrested control of the House halfway through Barack Obama’s first term — time when Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), then chair of the House Oversight Committee, vowed to do after the 2010 midterms: “I want to hold seven hearings a week, times 40 weeks.” With little hope of advancing legislation under divided government, Republicans are looking to investigate everything from Covid to critical race theory.
To lawmakers and operatives of both parties who survived that era of GOP interrogation, they caution that this new regime will bring much of the same — only worse. “This crop of House Republicans make Darrell Issa look intellectual,” says Eric Schultz, who served as a deputy White House press secretary during that era.
After House Republicans reclaimed the House in a landslide victory during the 2010 midterms, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) issued a mandate to his new majority: “We’re in the communications business now,” recalls Kurt Bardella, who served as Issa’s spokesperson. Issa’s House Oversight Committee was the nerve center of that directive, tasked with interrogating and amplifying any whiffs of scandal from the Obama administration. Issa welcomed some feistier new lawmakers to his committee, including Reps. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., and Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah. While leaders looked up at the Tea Party majority, Issa was more open to welcoming others, such as Reps. Jason Chaffetz (R.Utah) and Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah..
Their work began in earnest with an investigation into Obama’s management of Operation Fast and Furious, a George W. Bush-era program that had permitted illegal gun sales in order to track Mexican drug cartels. The House Energy and Commerce Committee was established in September 2011. dug into Solyndra, the solar-panel manufacturer who had received a $535million loan guarantee from Energy Department, was forced to declare bankruptcy. Steven Chu, then Energy Secretary, was brought into the committee. Congress For more than five hours of testimony. One year later, Islamic militants attacked U.S. Embassy. BenghaziThree Americans were killed when three Americans were shot in Libya. Ten separate investigations by the GOP were launched into the attack against Obama’s administration.
None of the investigations ever really found substantive wrongdoing, but that didn’t stop the oversight from sucking up the political media industrial complex’s attention. “There was a deliberate communications strategy: Flood the zone and take advantage of the media’s competition with one another to break things,” Bardella explains. The advent of Politico and its thirst for microscoops had just upended D.C.’s media landscape, playing right into the committee’s hands. Republicans could milk four or five news cycles out of a single request for information with a formula that went something like this: “Step one, issue a voluntary document request; step two, threaten subpoena; step three, issue the subpoena,” Bardella says. It doesn’t matter that coverage seldom asked difficult questions about validity of what was being covered. “I don’t think reporters and Washington understood how irresponsible Republicans were willing to be,” Schultz says.
Boehner’s mandate would be a regrettable one by certain measures. His colleagues made more strident demands on Obama administration officials. The House held Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress during the Operation Fast and Furious investigation, but GOP lawmakers requested more — something Boehner waved off as illegitimate. Indeed, former Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), who led the Solyndra investigation, said Boehner’s lack of support took the wind out of his investigation’s sails. “He said he felt we had too many contempt of Congresses in the offing, and ours wasn’t as important as other ones were,” Stearns recalls. “It’s the kind of thing that led to Boehner losing his speakership.”
Republicans had argued that political allies were paid for their investment in Solyndra’s bankrupt solar panel producer before taxpayers. But GOP lawmakers could never prove that — and, in fact, the program Made A 2014 report by the EEA reveals that it helped to accelerate development of renewable energy companies. report NPR discovered.
It may be more difficult to find the Boehner-era brake-pumping in this Congress. New House Speaker, after groveling for the microphone Kevin McCarthy isn’t in a position to be a check on much of anything — nor has he suggested any interest in restraint when it comes to investigating the Biden administration. McCarthy finds the only thing too extreme is the more than a dozen Biden and other administration officials were the targets of impeachment resolutions. “I think the country doesn’t like impeachment used for political purposes at all,” McCarthy told Punchbowl News October
Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-Ga.), who will have her committee assignments reinstated after Democrats stripped them last Congress, says she wants to serve on the Oversight Committee — a request to which incoming chair Comer has signaled he welcomes.
Is there any chance for Democrats in this new era. Veteran veterans of the 2010s GOP investigations state that Democrats can benefit from having the right messengers leading them on key committees. Bardella recalls Nancy Pelosi (D.Calif.), who was then the minority leader, but chose to give up her seniority and install Rep. Elijah Cummings. In 2011, Cummings was the Oversight’s ranking member. “Cummings had a political mindset and knew how to communicate effectively — he was a perfect foil for Issa,” Bardella recalls. Last month, House Democrats chose Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.Bardella praised the choice of Oversight leader Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who was one of the leaders in the House investigation into the January 6th rebellion.
Veterans also see a positive for Democrats because the GOP is continuing to focus on the culture wars. Ashley Etienne was the communications director for Cummings in that era. She recalls Sandra Fluke from Georgetown University, who GOP lawmakers didn’t allow to testify during their Oversight hearing regarding contraception. The GOP’s denial of Fluke’s testimony backfired. Wen Democrats gave her a chance to later testify in a standalone hearing, they earned nearly two weeks of positive news cycles — fueled, in part, on voters’ fears about the future of abortion rights. Bardella believes Democrats should exploit the fact that Republicans are holding hearings on issues like trans rights. “If they’re going after the LBGTQ community and the hospitals that treat them, Democrats can put a human face on what that looks like,” Bardella says. “If you have members of congress up there lambasting a patient telling that story, that’s not going to look good.”
And perhaps, most of all, the GOP inquiries seem more absurd than ever before. “At least with Benghazi and Fast and Furious, those are at least governing actions in question,” says a Democratic official working on oversight investigations. “When you cross the rubicon with ‘Dr Fauci collaborated with China to launch the pandemic’ or ‘Hunter Biden’s work overseas is why the strategic petroleum reserve is running out’ — these are just conspiracy theories.”
“Back then, we were more bipartisan — I don’t think we’d be bipartisan today,” Stearns says. “You lose your authenticity if it looks like a political witch hunt.”
Democrats are nevertheless taking the GOP’s ambitions seriously. House Democrats and the White House have maintained open communication regarding oversight preparations. Jeffries was elected as the leader of House Democrats in party because of his discipline as party messenger. This trait he highlighted as a manager during Trump’s first impeachment. They’re also preparing their own sort of counterattack: The Senate remains under Democratic control, and its leadership has nascent plans to keep the investigations into the Trump administration. “Hunter Biden’s laptop looks like nothing compared to what Jared and Ivanka did in the federal government,” Bardella says. “That needs to be spotlighted every day.”
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