To say Barely Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s tenure thus far has been rocky is putting it mildly. It all started with the four-day, 15-vote saga of his crawl to power in which he shed any scrap of dignity or principle with every capitulation to the Freedom Caucus and assorted maniacs he made. His majority had a brief moment of glory when it managed to come together in an act of petty retribution and bigotry to strip a Black Muslim woman, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) of one of her committee assignments.
That led up to this big week, when the plan was to overshadow President Joe Biden’s state of the union address with a couple of blockbuster investigative hearings. It didn’t really work out that way. Biden absolutely owned them Tuesday night, goading them into exposing themselves for what they are. So McCarthy was counting on Jim Jordan and James Comer to give him the comeback of a couple of blockbuster hearings. What they delivered even Fox News wasn’t having.
Comer’s big Oversight hearing on Twitter’s alleged collusion with the FBI to keep them from seeing Hunter Biden’s dick pics didn’t even manage to convince Fox News host Laura Ingraham. Watch her trying to coach GOP Rep. Clay Higgins (LA) into having anything at all real.
That could be why Fox didn’t carry Jordan’s inaugural “weaponization of the federal government” hearing, even though some of their stars were testifying for the GOP. “We’ll get back into it for anything newsworthy,” anchor John Roberts said after showing a brief clip. There wasn’t anything newsworthy, just a bunch of cranks airing their long lists of grievances and being embarrassed by the Democrats on the panel.
Let’s start with Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Hillary Clinton:
And Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Hillary Clinton. But her emails!
And Hunter Biden:
And Dr. Anthony Fauci:
Those were the headline witnesses: “a rousing presentation from two old guys who apparently wanted to vent every grievance real and imagined they've experienced over the last 20 to 30 years,” in the summation of Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly (VA).
There was also Fox star Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii turned whackadoodle conspiracy theorist who was there because Hillary Clinton made her a victim of “cancel culture” and smeared her. Gabbard donned her tinfoil to warn, “individuals in our government, often working through their arms in the mainstream media and big tech … get to decide what is true and what is false.” Frequent Fox guest Jonathon Turley showed up to be embarrassed by Democratic Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL) and Dan Goldman (NY).
There was one Democratic member of congress invited to speak, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), whose testimony brought sanity to the proceedings, but also exposed the gravity of what Republicans were trying to do with it. “Millions of Americans already feel that ‘Weaponization’ is the right name for this special subcommittee,” Raskin said. “Not because weaponization of the government is its target, but because weaponization of the government is its purpose.”
”The odd name of the weaponization subcommittee constitutes a case of pure psychological projection. When former President Donald Trump and his followers accuse you of doing something, they’re usually telling you exactly what their own plans are. By establishing a select subcommittee on weaponization, they’re telling us that Donald Trump’s followers will continue weaponizing any part of the government they can get their hands on to attack their enemies, defined as anyone who stands in the way of their quest for power.” […]
“Oversight must be organized around a comprehensive search for the truth, truth that will lead to progress, and not around revenge, which will lead us as a country to chaos and ruin,” he said.
Watch Raskin in action:
It was hardly the triumph Jim Jordan and Kevin McCarthy thought they were going to have. That’s not going to stop them, but it certainly exposed them for what they are.
Sarah Longwell is a longtime Republican strategist and prominent never-Trumper. Her podcast, The Focus Group, is a peek at the thousands of hours of focus groups she has conducted all across the country. Sarah comes on to give her thoughts about the state of the current Republican Party and why its future remains bleak.
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