Looking Away from Jan. 6
By: Terry Schwadron
Tags: Elections, Republicans, Politics, Donald Trump, Capitol

Sen. John Thune, R-SD

Terry H. Schwadron

May 22, 2021

Of all the Republican protestations about looking away from an independent commission examination of the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol attacks, this one stood out:

“I want our midterm message to be about the kinds of issues that the American people are dealing with — it’s jobs and wages and the economy, national security, safe streets, strong borders and those types of issues,” said Sen. John Thune, R-SD, the second-ranking GOP senator, normally seen as a rational speaker, if identifiably partisan. “Not relitigating the 2020 election.”

In other words, we should avoid looking at what gave rise to Jan. 6 to avoid any reckoning that centers on Donald Trump in a 2022 campaign that will in fact center on Republican voter suppression efforts, post-Census gerrymandering by Republican state legislatures, and unending efforts by Donald Trump to make us, in fact, relitigate the 2020 election.

Thune’s simple argument, presented in seeming clear, rational tones, is so at odds with what Republicans actually are doing as to make his words absurd. We’ve long stopped listening to the Trump-at-any-cost arguments, like those of Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., but Thune’s tone sounds more reasonable, even if the arguments are not.

Of course, the House passed a bill to create the commission despite official Republican opposition, but in the Senate, where 60 votes are needed, chances for passage of this bill, like so many, are dim.

As The New York Times notes, in March, a Monmouth University poll found that a solid majority of Americans thought an independent commission should be set up, with just 37 percent preferring to let other “internal investigations” take care of things. Roughly half of Republicans favored a full independent inquiry. But in the weeks since, Republican lawmakers and conservative pundits have coalesced as Trump has only tightened his grip on the party ahead of the 2022 midterms.

How to Judge?

Let’s set aside that Republicans as a bloc have been regularly opposing bills to aid job, wages, the economy, national security and streets safe for all residents.

His point is that Republicans should run and be judged on a view of the future rather than on the unpleasantness of the past — even if they run out of issues after a border wall, overturning of abortion laws, anti-rights laws for transgender people and more tax cuts for the wealthy.

Too bad Donald Trump doesn’t agree. The promise to get back out before MAGA rallies is to beat the living hell out of 2020 election whines, attack anyone who disagrees, and use invented anger for fund-raising for himself.

After all the public silliness of the Republican-ordered recount, or relitigation, of votes in Arizona, that Republican state senate doubled down this week, and other states, including Georgia and New Hampshire, were talking of efforts to transplant this recount mania there.

The very public Trump loyalty tests underway in Congress are spreading already to Republican primaries across the country, where anyone who sees a problem in Trump inciting a riot over election fraud claims is automatically labeled an enemy.

And the debate in Congress to avoid creating an independent commission for Jan. 6 accounting guarantees that the body will start spending money, lots of it, to set up systems to avoid a repeat without having established whether and to what degree the then-White House had in directing an incitement against its own government.

There’s a Pattern

It’s a pattern. As a party, the Republicans even are willing to throw some of their own to the wolves, including Rep.John Katko, R-NY, who negotiated the legislation creating the commission with Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., to avoid questions about the degree to which Republicans, including members of Congress as well as those in Trump’s circle, participated in the Jan. 6 events.

You’d think that some Republicans would want the added venue of commission hearings to argue that what we watched on television live really was antifa in Trump drag, or that these “normal tourists” to the Capitol never put anyone in harm. There is only one reason for opposition — — to protect Donald Trump from important questions about his actions in drawing the mob together, sending it to the Capitol and refusing to do anything to stop it for hours.

The joke here is that Democrats pretty much gave Republicans what they had sought in negotiations — only to have the whole business thrown in their faces by the Republican leadership. We can only hope that Democrats like Senators Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema, who insist on bipartisanship in all legislation, are paying attention.

The Republican denials are an aggregated insult to our intelligence. Why we would want to vote in support of candidates who don’t want government to do its various expected work is a mystery.

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www.terryschwadron.wordpress.com