Kevin McCarthy, Leader of the House Republican caucus, must decide whether he’ll confess, testify, before his Democrat peers, and Republican turncoat dead-enders Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger who form the panel he denounced. Maybe, finally, he’s seeing the issue clearly before him, but probably not. Heretofore, Republican lawmakers acted as if the January 6th Select Committee would only be targeting Trump world. Instead, the committee’s power seems limitless and they’re now conducting criminal investigations, even calling fellow House members to testify. This is all unprecedented.
Dana Bash interviewed Rep. Bennie Thompson Sunday, January 2nd, about the implications for their investigation. Thompson asserted to Bash that the insurrection was “not a comedy of errors.” It was planned, he believes, and he’s investigating the plan, the conspiracy to attack the Capitol.
Thompson’s uncomfortable comment as Bash pressed him may not sound like a big deal but it is. The select committee is on dangerous constitutional ground and Thompson knows it. They are not a criminal investigative body. Rep. Thompson just asserted that the select committee was investigating crimes — investigating a conspiracy.
How will the Supreme Court respond to this? There is Trump’s case before their court. There are cases before Federal courts arguing that this is the problem with the select committee: it’s acting as detectives and prosecutors (and they are, in fact, using former federal prosecutors to question witnesses) to build criminal cases. This is unconstitutional. This needs to be stopped.
The only purpose a committee such as this serves is to write better legislation for the future. Nancy Pelosi’s select committee is not interested in Capitol security or, apparently, legislating. She’s interested in proving a criminal conspiracy to form an insurrection. The idea itself is absurd. But more than that, it’s unconstitutional for Congress to be used in this way. It’s not their job. Democrats don’t care, though. By any means necessary. They proved their corruption with the Russia-collusion hoax. Hoaxes work and if Democrats and Never Trumpers can create another hoax narrative, they will.
Hopefully, Leader McCarthy now knows that up close and personal. Maybe he’ll get it in gear and stop the machinations of this political trial in search of witches to burn.
Sunday, Leader McCarthy wrote a letter to kick off the new year. In it he says this:
On a separate note, this week will mark one year from the riots at the Capitol. As we have said from the start, the actions of that day were lawless and as wrong as wrong can be. Our Capitol should never be compromised and those who broke the law deserve to face legal repercussions and full accountability.
Unfortunately, one year later, the majority party seems no closer to answering the central question of how the Capitol was left so unprepared and what must be done to ensure it never happens again. Instead, they are using it as a partisan political weapon to further divide our country.
By way of an update, House Administration Ranking Member Rodney Davis will be sending a memo to each of your offices outlining meaningful and measurable steps that should be taken to protect our Capitol from all threats — steps that the current majority party is negligent in acting upon.
This is still relatively weak sauce. He does allude, however, to the central question about Capitol security. This is the question the Democrats have strayed from as they’ve ventured down perceived criminal rabbit holes.
In case Rep. McCarthy and the rest of D.C. Republicans are still delusional, here is how this Committee is going to work. One way it won’t work: the Democrats being sated by Republicans issuing pious denunciations and troubled umbrage.
The January 6th Committee wants blood.
Their first target? Donald Trump. They want to so tarnish him that as the ubiquitous Liz Cheney made clear on the ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos (the Clinton fixer in the media — well, one of them) that Trump “can never be near the Oval Office again.” Cheney might as well be a Democrat at this point but better serves as a pseudo-Republican shield maiden for Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats on the select committee.
Their secondary target? House and Senate Republicans. The January 6 committee will present their full findings this coming summer just in time for the midterm elections. The Democrats know that their policies are hated. They know that President Biden has lost the support of the American people. They know that they’re in trouble electorally. The only way they hope to win is to connect every Republican to the actions of a few out-of-control rioters on January 6th, 2021. The problem? Republicans are too stupid to see the implications. Every single Republican running for office will be asked questions by Democratic operatives posing as journalists. Do you, fill-in-the-blank politician, approve of the findings? The findings, of course, will be that Donald Trump is a criminal; that Donald Trump and his activists undermined Democracy; that violence is always uncalled for, etc. The framing will be entirely helpful for the Democrats.
What Republicans also don’t get is that they, as Republicans, are considered enemies of “the people.” “The people” are defined as Democrat Congressmen who wish to be reelected. Many Republicans hate Trump and they believe this hate will inure them to the actions of the January 6th Committee. Bad news. It won’t. Why? Because even those who hate Trump are running against Democrats and Democrats are willing to do and say anything to win. Republicans are still concerned about being liked. But even the Trump haters are in a bind: denounce Trump publicly and lose the support of their voters or accept the January 6th Committee’s framing and be tarred as someone embracing violence.
The third target: activists. They want the blood, and phone records, of every effective Republican activist in the country. They want them bankrupted. They want them prosecuted by the DOJ. They want them given no mercy even if protests are legal, free speech is legal (somewhat), congregating outside the Capitol is legal, and even if no organizer planned, endorsed, or encouraged violence — which they didn’t. The Committee knows that the process is the punishment. Maybe the hapless January 6th organizers won’t go to jail, but maybe, in kangaroo D.C. courts, they will! The Democrats have home field advantage and they are willing to turn Washington, D.C.’s court system into a Stalinesque gulag factory, if necessary. They’re doing it right now and it’s working.
This process will destroy GOP grassroots organizing; or at least that’s the hope. Many, many individual activists do the work the party won’t do and many of them are being persecuted. If the Democrats can criminalize legal free speech and organizing on the Republican side, they’re immediately effective at hamstringing the GOP for 2024. The GOP doesn’t care as they’ve always hated the Tea Party types, but they haven’t had a win without them.
The most important target: The American people. In one way the GOP and Democrats in D.C. agree: They all hate the Tea Party, MAGA, and any other populist right-leaning group or anyone who would even think of voting for Trump. They like to do the bidding of their masters (not their voters) unmolested, thank you. Being kept free to break their promises to voters is easier without accountability.
The American people stand in the way of the Democrats, their bureaucracies, the media, the academy, and the rest of the power structures who see total power via a marriage between technology and the government imminent. It’s why the FBI would go to School Board meetings and threaten parents — an empowered citizen is anathema to the kind of government many in D.C. would build.
When Trump surprised the world and won the first election against the inevitable Hillary Clinton, the power structures in the United States and around the world never recovered. The power brokers running these institutions would do anything, did do anything, to get rid of Trump.
What the DOJ, FBI, CIA, etc. tried to do clumsily, yet effectively, to Trump’s first term, they’re doing expertly and surgically with the January 6th Committee. If this committee is allowed to run roughshod, as the Republicans seem willing to allow them to do, they’ll stymie a second Trump term or anyone else who gets the nomination. And what Republicans are too blind to see is that they’ll destroy the GOP in the process. The GOP will participate in their own destruction and won’t realize it because they’ll be enjoying Trump’s demise.
The Republicans, so far, have been willing to be destroyed. They would rather lose than win with people they loathe. As bad as Biden and the Democrats are for America, Democrats in charge are not all that bad for D.C. Republicans, who get paid for sitting around and complaining.
It’s much more difficult to lead and to govern and the Trump presidency laid bare how bad the Republicans are at both. They hated Trump so much they didn’t want to accomplish anything lest they give him a win.
This comes back to Kevin McCarthy. Well done, Liz Cheney! The only hope the Republicans have at this point is that the Democrats go too far and it looks like they’re going to do just that. Calling fellow House members, threatening colleagues with criminal referrals. hopefully is beyond the pale even for feckless House Republicans.
That remains to be seen. It’s been impressive how short-sighted and indifferent Republicans have been so far. Maybe personal pain will get their attention.
