Amy Walter and Kay Henderson on voter reaction to the House impeachment inquiry

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• Geoff Bennett:

  For analysis of the 2024 presidential campaign and how voters are reacting to the impeachment inquiry that House Republicans are launching, we turn to Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter and Kay Henderson of Radio Iowa and Iowa PBS.

  It's great to see you both.

  So, let's pick up where Laura left off in her report. Donald Trump, the man who nominated three of the Supreme Court justices responsible for overturning Roe, now says that Republicans, in his words, speak very inarticulately about abortion, and he criticized those who push for abortion bans without exemptions.

  What do you make of the message, Amy, and the messenger?

• Amy Walter, The Cook Political Report:

  Right. I saw two things here.

  One is, he was almost acting like a pundit, looking back at the 2022 elections and some of the ballot initiatives on abortion that had put forward and seeing how badly Republicans have done in the wake of Roe v. Wade being overturned, how abortion has really been an energizing issue for Democrats and has helped them do much better than anybody expected in the midterm elections.

  I also see somebody who's looking past not just his past positions on this issue, but looking past the primary. He's basically trying to set himself up for the general election. And this question about whether this is the kind of issue that Republican voters are going to punish Donald Trump for taking a much more — I mean, I don't kind of know where he ended up after that conversation.

  He was a little bit here. He's a little bit there. But he did come out specifically and go after Ron DeSantis and say, six weeks is — I can't remember the exact word.

• Geoff Bennett:

  A terrible mistake.

• Amy Walter:

  Oh, a terrible mistake, yes.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Terrible mistake is the phrase that he used.

• Amy Walter:

  Yes.

• Geoff Bennett:

  So, Kay, you spoke to Governor DeSantis about that. What was his response?

• Kay Henderson, News Director, Radio Iowa:

  Well, basically, DeSantis is suggesting this puts Donald Trump's pro-life credentials in question.

  And I would also add that Trump has had an ongoing sort of feud with Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds. She is the most popular Republican in the state that's going to host the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses. She also signed a six-week abortion ban this summer. And he called it terrible.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Amy, you mentioned the pivot that the former president is making from the primary to the general.

  Is there a risk in doing that too early? Or is he so far ahead that it doesn't make a difference?

• Amy Walter:

  Yes, he doesn't seem to be worried about this.

  And what I thought was really interesting, I mean, Kay is sitting in Iowa, so it was there, but I was just reading reports of what was going on at the conference this weekend. And so there was one woman there who they interviewed who to me sort of summed up how this issue plays with a lot of Republican voters who define themselves as pro-life, who may have told those pollsters, yes, I support a complete ban.

  But when you ask them specifically, what do you think that really means, they kind of sound a little less certain of that. She said, yes, abortion is my absolute number one issue. And so the reporter followed up and said, OK, so how about a federal ban? She said, well, I don't know. I could go either way on it, right?

  So I heard this in focus groups too in 2022 of Republicans who said, I consider myself pro-life, but I think we should have certain exceptions. So I think the issue is maybe a little more muddled. And Donald Trump is feeling confident enough in that and his lead that even in a state like Iowa, he thinks it's not going to catch up to him.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Kay, in Iowa, the Republican Party, as you well know, it's driven and dominated by white evangelicals, evangelicals who are loyal to Donald Trump.

  The question is why, especially when they have other options, like Mike Pence, who's known for his devout faith, has his roots in the conservative Christian movement. Was his decision not to back Donald Trump's effort to overturn the election, is that a deciding, a real deciding factor for people?

• Kay Henderson:

  It is.

  Donald Trump is popular with Iowa Republicans, and Mike Pence is not popular with Donald Trump. And back to Amy's point about Trump, I think Iowa Republicans in general see Trump as a man besieged with indictments, with critics.

  And so they feel compelled to support him, especially evangelical Christians, who make the argument that they are out there being tarnished or targeted because of their religious beliefs. And so they feel a kinship with Donald Trump in that regard.

• Amy Walter:

  I mean, the interesting thing too in watching him try to make this pivot is, OK, we need to win back some of those suburban voters, those women voters, those swing voters that we have lost, say, since the midterm elections over the issue of abortion.

  But the challenge for Donald Trump isn't so much abortion. It's Donald Trump and the many things that he has said and done, starting with January 6 and the indictments. That is not going to be fixed for him in a general election by moderating on abortion.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Let's talk about impeachment.

• Kay Henderson:

  Yes.

• Geoff Bennett:

  I'm sorry, go ahead, Kay.

• Kay Henderson:

  Well, the other thing is, if you're out here talking to Iowa voters who are going to candidate events and seeing candidates who aren't Donald Trump, they are looking at other candidates, but when you ask them, who are you inclined to support at this moment, well, I'm a Trump supporter, but I'm holding my options open.

  So that's just really telling of what control Donald Trump has on the nomination. And here in Iowa, it's really Donald Trump's race to lose.

• Geoff Bennett:

  That's interesting.

  Shifting our focus back here to Washington, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's decision to green-light this impeachment inquiry, it's drawing criticism from Democrats, obviously, but also some Republicans. Ken Buck, who is a member, we should say, of the far right Freedom Caucus, he wrote an op-ed.

  And he says that: "Trump's impeachment in 2019 was a disgrace to the Constitution and a disservice to Americans. The GOP's reprise in 2023 is no better." He says: "This is a flimsy excuse for impeachment."

  What's the risk-reward matrix for Kevin McCarthy right now with this impeachment?

• Amy Walter:

  That's right.

  So we know that his — the risk is that he loses his conservative flank and — on something like funding the government, which, by the way, it looks like he doesn't have right now anyway. So this is going to be an ongoing fight. I don't know that impeachment solves it.

  The other risk is that those moderates — Ken Buck doesn't fit into this category, but the moderate Republicans up this year have to take an uncomfortable vote on this issue.

  But there's something else here, too, which is, somewhere in between, this is making this issue of Hunter Biden, questions about corruption, keeping that in the mix, and so that it muddies the water when we get into the general election. Donald Trump has indictments and who knows what legal outcomes there will be. And then there's also this, oh, well, there was all this stuff about Hunter Biden. Whatever happened with that?

  Now, it's hard to believe you can go through an inquiry and not end with an impeachment. It's a very slippery slope. But I think, for some of those Republicans, that is the ideal, is muddy the waters as much as possible without having to actually take a vote.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Kay, is that strategy working among the Republicans you speak to in Iowa? I mean, how is this issue resonating?

• Kay Henderson:

  Well, among elected Republicans, the thing that they keep saying is, this is a fact-finding mission. None of them say that at this point they're supporting impeachment or even expecting to vote on impeachment, number one.

  Number two, among Iowa GOP prospective caucus-goers, this is just sort of, OK, go do it, because they have all been talking about Hunter Biden for months and months and months. So this is not essentially big news for the rank and file.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Kay Henderson, with a perspective for us this evening from Iowa, and Amy Walter, it's great to see you, as always. Thank you both.

• Amy Walter:

  Thank you.

• Kay Henderson:

  Great to be here.

• Amna Nawaz:

  We apologize. We had some technical difficulties. Thank you for staying with us. We're going to bring you some more news right now.

• Geoff Bennett:

  And, lucky for us, Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter is still here.

• Amy Walter, The Cook Political Report:

  I'm still here.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Fantastic.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Thank goodness.

• Geoff Bennett:

  So one of the things we didn't get to talk about in Politics Monday, but now we do have time, is this brewing funding fight here on Capitol Hill, where House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has apparently forged this deal among members of his own caucus that a House Republican leader, that he's been able to get an agreement among his own members.

  That that is news…

• Amy Walter:

  That that's news to keep the government open.

• Geoff Bennett:

  … in itself is really remarkable.

• Amy Walter:

  It is, and to see the number of Republicans — remember, he can only afford to lose four Republicans.

  And there are some very vocal Republicans who are sitting there, saying: I'm not voting for anything, daring the government to shut down.

  Kevin McCarthy saying to them: I have been through shutdowns before. You never win a shutdown. You think you're going to win this fight, but you're not.

  And even if he does get the votes that he needs, this is for a short-term funding. This is just to get us to the end of October. So we could see another fight going into November. And that's why the twin challenges here for McCarthy, he's got impeachment. He's got keeping the government funding.

  If you're a Republican running for reelection in 2024, thinking, oh, great, I'm just going to focus completely on Biden and Democrats and what they have done wrong, now you have the challenge of saying, well, I have to defend my own record, if you're a Republican member, on the fact that we weren't able to fund the government or however this may turn out, an actual shutdown.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Amy, each one of these interactions seems to reveal to us a little bit more about how Kevin McCarthy leads this conference and about how much influence exactly that Freedom Caucus, that right-wing caucus has within Republicans.

• Amy Walter:

  That's right.

• Amna Nawaz:

  What do you take away from this latest exchange, the way we saw Kevin McCarthy rise up and basically say, go ahead and try to remove me, and it ended up where it is now?

• Amy Walter:

  Well, and that's the leverage he does have, which is, they can take a vote and remove him, and replace him with who exactly?

  And this has been a challenge for Republicans who don't like their leadership for some time now. They wanted to go after John Boehner, as you remember, Paul Ryan. They go after their leadership, saying, we're going to — it's called the motion to vacate the chair.

  But there's nobody waiting to take the leadership. And so what you have is a handful of members who really just seemingly like to gum up the works. They're really not interested — they're not leading another faction of the Republican Party that says, we have a different vision for how we want to take the party and we're going to implement that with this person as a leader.

  It's just, we don't like it. We don't want to take your rules. We like the attention that we're getting, because I'm just a — they can basically be one member of the House and have an incredible amount of power, more power even than the speaker.

• Geoff Bennett:

  In the couple of minutes we have left, is this the new normal, where Congress governs via manufactured crisis?

• Amy Walter:

  Doesn't this feel exhausting? And just for regular people out there, they have to look at this and just say, there — this is — this has to — there has to be a better way to do things around here.

  And yet the short-term incentives for so many members of Congress is the opposite of what the people in America want, which is they want government to actually work, do basic things, like funding the government.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Do they, though? Because why then do people elect members of Congress who seem like they don't want government to work?

• Amy Walter:

  I know it.

  Well, many of these people are elected in primaries where 5 percent of voters turn out. And in some cases, we have elected leaders who were essentially voted on by maybe 5,000 or 10,000 people in their district. They represent over 750,000, a million people in a district that's overwhelmingly red.

  So that is the bigger challenge for a country going forward. And we have we have sort of made these lines in the sand that we say, I'd rather be on the side of something that's dysfunctional, but is my team, than allowing compromise with the other side, who I see as an enemy.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Amy, we have got less than a minute left.

  You alluded to this group earlier. I just wanted to get your take on it, which is these Republicans who won in Biden districts…

• Amy Walter:

  Yes.

• Amna Nawaz:

  With Mr. McCarthy now announcing they're going to move forward with an impeachment inquiry, what position does this put them in?

• Amy Walter:

  Very, very awkward position, especially if what we find is, there's not a whole lot of they're there and they're taking a vote that voters may see as being incredibly political and not focused on the issues that they, voters, that is, care about, in districts that, in some cases, Joe Biden carried by significant margins.

  I think it's really that they look like they're not doing the thing that they went there to do, which is govern, versus support for Joe Biden the person.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Amy Walter, thank you so much.

• Amy Walter:

  You're welcome.