Joe Biden’s dangerous incompetence crescendoed earlier in the week when US forces pulled out of Afghanistan, unconscionably leaving American citizens behind. Prior to that, questions of the president’s mental and physical acuity were already widespread, and his latest moves only compounded that. That includes the revelation that the president asked former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to lie about the Taliban’s successes in exchange for support.

Given that, the calls for impeachment are growing louder. After all, Donald Trump was impeached over supposition about a phone call. Is abandoning Americans to terrorists and asking a world leader to lie in the process somehow less egregious? Remember, we’ve been previously assured that impeachment is a political act and that no actual high crime or misdemeanor has to exist.

On that front, Sen. Mitch McConnell has chimed in, and he’s not exactly leading the charge.

Mitch McConnell Has Weighed in on Whether to Impeach Joe Biden https://t.co/lBAZbKfOSi

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) September 2, 2021

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is less than keen on the idea, though. Instead, he thinks the way to change things is at “the ballot box.”

McConnell’s comments were made during an event held on Wednesday afternoon in Pikeville, Kentucky.

“Well, look, the president is not going to be removed from office. There’s a Democratic House, a narrowly Democratic Senate. That’s not going to happen,” he said. “There isn’t going to be an impeachment,” he added for good measure.

Well, that’s certainly not based.

My issue here isn’t the pragmatism on display. Of course, Biden is not going to be impeached by a Democrat House or Senate. McConnell doesn’t need to bother pointing that out. Rather, the question is if Republicans are willing to show any kind of killer instinct and to hold the left to their own standards.

For example, every criticism McConnell otherwise lodges at Biden isn’t going to result in his removal from office. Yet, that criticism is still valuable, correct? That’s especially true when talking about shaping perceptions for the next elections. An impeachment push isn’t about actually removing Biden from office. Rather, it’s about consistency and showing voters that the president deserves to be held to the same standard Trump was held to. The messaging is the point.

Yes, the ballot box will be the ultimate test, but what happens at the ballot box is influenced by how Republicans choose to fight back at this moment. GOP voters are watching, and they aren’t going to respond well to more Washington knee-bending. It is not lost on them that many Republicans went harder at Trump than they now go at Biden. McConnell needs to be aware of that perception, and he needs to push back against it with decisive rhetoric that shows Republicans are not going to kowtow to more one-sided talk of norms.

In short, the question for McConnell isn’t whether Biden will be impeached. Rather, it’s if McConnell thinks he should be. If he doesn’t, he should say that instead of hiding behind obfuscations about what is or isn’t possible. Stand up, stiffen your spine, and take a position.