RUSH LIMBAUGH LEFT A VOID.

The current crop of successors, including the Clay and Buck production, have not brought the proper mix of parody and seriousness to the dueling investigations of the Trump and Biden rent-seeking organizations.  We open with regime media questioning the Republicans opening an impeachment inquiry in the House of Representatives.

On Monday, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy ordered the House Oversight, Judiciary and Ways and Means Committees to start an impeachment inquiry into Biden without anything approaching comparable evidence. Indeed, the absence of such evidence was used as a perverse justification for the impeachment inquiry. The pretext is the purported need to grant greater investigatory authority to House committees examining whether Biden lied about his business dealings with his son Hunter and whether the president granted Hunter “special treatment” in the ongoing criminal investigation of Hunter’s potential tax and gun crimes.

That editorial continues,

But at the risk of sounding crass, where is the blue dress? Where is the phone call? Where is the riot? There’s little question that Biden family members — especially Hunter but also Joe Biden’s brother James and his daughter-in-law Hallie — have profited enormously over the course of Joe Biden’s political career. But evidence that the president was himself involved in Hunter’s schemes or shared in any of the profits is thus far lacking, as is any evidence that the president violated the law.

But at the risk of sounding crotchety, where is the populist voice asking El Rushbo's favorite question.

Remember the left’s battle cry: “The nature of the evidence is irrelevant; it’s the seriousness of the charge that matters.” You simply need to make a harsh, totally unfounded charge, and that’s reason enough to investigate.

Not, though, to the editorialists on Times Square.

There is a colloquial legal term for McCarthy’s approach: It’s a fishing expedition. He’s unilaterally opening a rare inquiry into a sitting president not because of the evidence that does exist but rather because of the evidence Republicans believe might exist. This is a remarkable expansion of the House’s conception of its role in impeachment, one that potentially places every future president in jeopardy whenever the House is controlled by the opposing party.

When bourgeois norms break down, the resulting grim strategy cycle of punishment becomes unpleasant.  It's a little late, though, for regime media to develop a conscience.  Back to Maha Rushie.

RUSH: Hillary Clinton was at the TIME 100 Summit. You know what she did? She offered the Democrats impeachment advice, and we have it for you right here. Here’s Hillary Clinton talking about the Mueller report and impeachment.

HILLARY: You don’t put impeachment on the table as the only item on the table and say you’re going to get there no matter what, which is what happened in ’99. Instead you say we are going to proceed with the seriousness that this demands. Not to pre-judge the outcome, but to examine the evidence as objectively as possible and then to draw conclusions and if, at that point, they believe that high crimes and misdemeanors have been committed, then I think it is the obligation of the Congress to put forward articles of impeachment.

Those might be words Speaker McCarthy and the Freedom Caucus and whatever other fractions there are in the Republican caucus are living by.  In the grim strategy, that might be what Republican voters want, never mind how unhappy they are at Times Square.

Finally, it’s difficult to exaggerate the degree to which claims of Democratic corruption justify continued Republican support for Trump. This is how people who otherwise claim to value integrity reduce themselves to Trump sycophants. If everyone does it — if Joe Biden is as corrupt as or worse than Trump and is a Democrat in the bargain — then why not back the man they feel at least fights the right enemies and advances the right causes?

I do not write this piece to vouch for Joe Biden’s integrity or to defend any aspect of Hunter Biden’s conduct or career. If solid evidence of profound misconduct did exist — equivalent to proof of Clinton’s false statements under oath, Trump’s quid pro quo phone call with Zelensky or Trump’s riot — then opening impeachment proceedings would be an entirely proper response. But an impeachment inquiry in the absence of such evidence is an abuse of the House’s power, one that represents yet another dangerous escalation of American political combat.

When partisans are at the stage of "They started it" it might be time for wiser heads to prevail. I fear, though, that wiser heads are few, far between, and not much honored by today's partisans.  Today's posts have noted other reasons why Republican voters -- militant Normals, if you will -- might be on the Trump train.

Let's turn, next, to those assertions of "no evidence."  We'll let Reason's J. D. Tuccille, a frequent source for Cold Spring Shops, elaborate.

If there's "no evidence" of wrongdoing, as many pundits insist, why is the Republican House majority fooling with an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden's business dealings with his son, Hunter? Well, when talking heads say, "no evidence," they mean "no smoking-gun proof." And they're right; the current case against the president probably wouldn't prevail in court. But there really is evidence of corruption and sleaze around Joe Biden, even if, so far, it doesn't rise to courtroom standards. While impeachment proceedings will likely go nowhere, Americans are entitled to pass their own judgments based on that evidence.

Yes, and to regret having ticked the box for such a grifter, who turned out to be a sock puppet for the communist wing of his party, but until voters see that it is only a binary choice (between Biden and Trump) as long as voters confine their choices to Biden or Trump, and reject the false binary, we're going to be gridlocked into a grim strategy.

Heck, the regime media types seem to be conceding that, oh, maybe there is evidence, only it's not great.

You'll note how "no evidence" morphs into "no clear evidence" about "specific transactions"—those goal posts must be mounted on wheels. But a lot of the same outlets saying there's no evidence spend a lot of ink disputing the persuasiveness of evidence they tell us doesn't exist.

Arguably, people who spend a lifetime learning Official Washington's ways can figure out how best to do well while doing good.

Maybe Joe Biden really enjoyed discussing rainfall with foreign bigwigs. Or perhaps he was savvy enough to signal involvement in a deal without saying anything legally actionable. After all, concerns that Hunter acts as a middleman for his father in unsavory dealings date back many years.

Ultimately, it is on the voters, though, to turf the grifters out, rules of evidence or not.

Is all of this enough to impeach the president? Doubtful. Is it enough to maintain an inquiry? I'd certainly say so—though the Democratic majority in the Senate is unlikely to convict. Impeachment proceedings will end up being political theater, like those against then-President Donald Trump. But public opinion doesn't require the same standard of proof.

We have much to look forward to.