Impeach Beshear? Seriously? In Frankfort and DC, Republicans need to act like grownups.

In the same week the U.S. Capitol was overrun by the domestic terrorists who make up Donald Trump’s base, Kentucky’s state legislature got to work. The “superdupermajority” of Republicans put all their energy and brain-power into making sure Gov. Andy Beshear was hampered in efforts to save us all from coronavirus, and then to put a cherry on it, announced they will set up a committee to impeach him.

So on one side of Frankfort is an earnest, serious politician, one who hasn’t gotten everything right but has tried hard to battle a pandemic the likes of which we haven’t seen since 1918. On the other side, we have some distinctly unserious people who are working hard on curbing said serious politicians, and, say, on how to hamstring the last two abortion clinics in the state while thousands of people get sick of COVID-19 and die.

If you want to know just how not serious these people are, they had to quickly amend their bill curbing the governor’s powers to close schools and businesses after Beshear himself reminded them that sometimes his rules were less stringent than the CDC.

Then to top off this tragicomedy of errors, House officials announced a panel to take up articles of impeachment against Beshear as a bunch of armed thugs circled the state Capitol. This is the same kind of militia movement that earlier this year hung an effigy of Beshear outside the governor’s mansion.

This must stop.

These issues are all related. It’s now clear that the violence at the U.S. Capitol was significantly more ominous than first reported, with the “law and order” crowd trying to, and in one case, succeeding in beating a police officer to death. That they were unsuccessful in reaching Pelosi or Pence seems merely lucky. It’s bipartisan hatred at this point.

But Republicans in Frankfort and Washington, D.C., who have played pattycake with these kinds of extremists for years, have got to stop this wing of the party from hijacking them literally, it seems, and on policy. They have got to become grown-ups and stop with these silly games that end in not so silly ways.

House Speaker David Osborne says he’s required to create a panel to address a citizen panel on impeachment, and maybe it’s his way of making sure the issue gets stuck in bureaucratic oblivion. As it should. Any thinking person knows that Beshear, whose actions have been upheld by the courts numerous times, should not be impeached. That is a grave punishment that should only be used on a president who urged his bloodthirsty followers to riot and hunt down his own vice-president because he wouldn’t overturn his Constitutional duties on his behalf.

Serious people disagree on policy issues, such as the best way to help people struggling from a pandemic. But Republicans in Frankfort want to hamstring Beshear’s executive power, AND oppose his budgetary plan to give more money to businesses AND impeach him, all while they condemn the violence in Washington AND watch it percolate around our state Capitol.

This must stop. The GOP must stop with the lies, political pandering and extremism. These are serious times, and it’s time for Kentucky Republicans to start acting like grownups.

This story was originally published January 11, 2021 at 11:01 AM.