I'm not staying up all night for this one, because I feel like I can hum the score to this drama in my sleep. Maybe I'll be proven wrong in the morning. But when Mitch McConnell asks his people to fall in line as a "personal favor"--my hopes are pretty low that Republicans will do the right thing. He put it that very way for a reason. It's about loyalty to the party, not the Constitution or any interest in justice. It isn't a mystery to me. McConnell and others know very well that an investigation into January 6 makes Republicans look bad. It makes political actio groups who brought busloads of donors to Washington look bad. It makes donors who funded same look bad. It makes GOP elected who spoke at "Stop the Steal" rallies, including that last one, look bad.Senate Republicans are ready to use the filibuster to block a bill creating a commission on the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection. It’d be this year’s first successful use of a filibuster, which blocks legislation unless 60 of the 100 members vote to advance it. https://t.co/iIYvWOyLLi
— AP Politics (@AP_Politics) May 27, 2021
And what am I always saying about things Trump-adjacent? If it looks bad, it is bad. McConnell can tell us he doesn't think we'll find out anything we don't already know from a Jan. 6 commission. Well fine then--but why does that make him so unwilling to put that theory of his to the test? Does it take a lot of imagination to think it might have something to do with his lack of interest in getting more evidence in both impeachments, or more investigation into the Kavanaugh confirmation, or any of the other things he's shut down?
My dad once told me if ignorance is bliss than stupid people are the happiest, and Mitch McConnell has opted for a very specific kind of joy. But I'd like to think it is very stupid. Mitt Romney gets it--it looks like Republicans are ducking the truth. If McConnell doesn't think negative messaging for literally siding with the idea that insurrection is no big deal is possible, he must be a merry old soul, because that kind of ignorance is rare and special indeed.
Lisa Murkowski has a point too--there's more at stake than the next election cycle. What about our democracy?
Susan Collins, always one to disappoint, lets us know that if the Republicans in the Senate don't approve the January 6 Committee then there won't be any reason to accept the finding of any select committee Speaker Pelosi authorizes, because it's partisan. Well, uh. Thanks for your concern. That's almost as dumb as Tommy Taterhead claiming that the bipartisan committee needs to be bipartisan enough for him, except with more practice at uselessness. It's too soon, it's too late, it's too specific, it's not broad enough, but overriding all of it--
It make Republicans look bad, because it was wholly a Republican enterprise. There wasn't antifa agitators in the mix--all the goofballs they have arrested are exactly who they seemed to be. And Republican messaging encouraged them, and encouraged them, and encouraged them. There has been more than one major lie served up here, and Republicans will allow maybe something less than ten defectors, but surely, not enough to clear the air.
Maybe I'll be proven wrong and McConnell will be eating his heart out--but I doubt it. But if they do shut it down, first thing--if we didn't believe McConnell's decree that his purpose in life is shutting down any Democratic agenda, let this be the first shovelful on the grave of any thoughts of bipartisanship--that should have ended when they went and acquitted Trump. And we tie this albatross around their necks, because an attack on democracy, on our institutions, like this, going unanswered for the very obvious and only reason--
It hangs around them. It's a dagger in the middle of their table. It's a ghost that haunts everything they do and say from now on. We shouldn't ever let it drop. The hypocrisy. The fake patriotism. The sham.
And all the open questions of who among them knew what, and why so many challenged the certification of the votes. And who Trump and his campaign contacted and when. Killing the commission should not make this die. It should make this worse.
3 comments:
The Eleven, two Dems, who couldn't be bothered to vote?
yeah, God smote Sodom and Gomorrah because he could not find 10 righteous men in the city!
There are a lot of references for the title--ten good men in Sodom and Gomorrah, Twelve Angry Men, A Few Good Men, but Ten Bears points out the notable absences--Sinema, who should have been there and has no excuse that I know of, and Patty Murray, who I think is usually tops but had some personal matter (so they say--also I kind of believe it from her), and then the carefree Republicans who very probably would not have been in favor of the commission anyhow--like Mike Rounds and Jim Inhofe, who I hear went to Romania, presumably to go vampire hunting (They say it was in support of NATO, but then again, people say all kinds of things.)
At this point, this has to be some kind of intellectual breaking point--there's no way 54-35 means 35 wins is fair or representative of the will of the people, and Republicans have gone out of their way to demonstrate that you can't reckon in good faith with people of bad intent. If there's good well-meaning folks among them, they get used as a fig leaf for the throbbing treachery of the others. I don't know what bipartisanship is supposed to mean when one group literally isn't either fit to govern, nor about to let the other group go ahead and take the wheel. And that's where the Republicans are. Useless at best and actively harmful otherwise.
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