With the news that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy will oppose the proposed legislation authorizing the creation and structure of a bipartisan commission to investigate the events of January 6th, there’s been an understandable outpouring of “well, of course he is” and “oh, noes, there goes bipartisanship comity” and “we’ll never know what really happened or why” and so on.
To all of which, I say the following: we already know what happened, we know who was involved, we know what the possible consequences could have been, and we know that the organizers are still at liberty (and probably aching for a do-over). Convening a commission is nevertheless necessary because these points aside, there’s a great deal we don’t know about the organizing and pre-planning that went into the event itself.
Hence Rick Wilson of all people advising the Democratic Party leadership to bury the ‘bipartisanship’ shtick and just convene the commission. Here’s his twitter thread:
Yes, I’m aware its Rick Wilson we’re talking about here, the guy whose track record for analysis is checkered (to say the very least). When it comes to this subject, however, I feel he’s got a couple points worth considering.
The short version: the GOP is no longer a friend to the country, and any effort at traditional “bipartisanship” is doomed to failure because the Republican Party is effectively controlled by a career failure from Queens, NY who has a vested interest in such an investigation not occurring. Indeed, several high-profile Republican officeholders themselves would have to answer very uncomfortable questions were such an investigation to occur.
The 2022 mid-terms are literally around the corner, and the Republicans see — rightly or wrongly — the majority within their grasp. Should they get that, does anyone have any illusions that they’ll use every iota of power and influence to wreck the Biden Administration? Hell, their fellows in far too many Statehouses have already put into place numerous restrictions on voting that their fellows in the Judiciary will be more than happy to uphold.
For the GOP, elections are no longer about respect for the populace or bringing forth a governing philosophy. Its about gaining and holding onto power, period. They literally have no other philosophy or really any idea how to govern anymore save through brute force of office.
The Democratic Party, in contrast, remains functional and sane, but doesn’t appear to have grasped exactly what almost happened four and a half months ago. This was no mere protest gone out of control, or even a pre-planned riot. Far too many of those invaders into hallowed halls came with the intention of killing members of Congress, and were armed with advance knowledge of the terrain to attempt to accomplish this.
And the Republicans today try to dismiss it all as nothing, or scream “Antifa/BLM were behind it!”
Worse, the Democratic Party’s response to date has been to emphasize their agenda, which while demonstrating who the adult in the room is doesn’t offer as compelling a case against The Big Lie the GOP has been feeding its voters, never mind all the voting restrictions. Its nearly the equivalent to bringing a Harlequin romance to a gun fight.
Its past time for the Republicans to start answering for their lies and extremism, and actually launching the Commission with the intention of doing just this would be a healthy step in that direction.
A point of clarification: when we’re talking about making “a Benghazi out of it”, I don’t mean turning it into a neverending hysterical recitations of “January 6th!” and hearings that revisit the same subjects over and over. I mean launching a full-court press into the hows and whys the outgoing Trump Administration, with the support of key members of the GOP Congressional caucus, whipped up its fans into a veritable lynch mob and sent them off to storm the Capitol on the very day the election results were being certified? Who in their right mind believed such a crowd would be peaceful, never mind believed it would respect an institution their leader had designated as corrupt and unworthy?
The Republicans will of course decry it as a partisan hit job, but they were going to do that anyway. The Commission’s hearings have to probe into things that the Republicans will automatically be in the defensive on, and rightly so.
As Wilson puts it: call the panel and start demanding answers.
UPDATE:
For those who can’t make the link to Wilson’s thread, here are the individual tweets:
