The Real, More Evil Reason Republicans Don't Want a January 6 Commission

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari.)

"Those members of congress who incited this violent crowd, those members of congress that attempted to help our president undermine our democracy. I am going to see that they are held accountable and if necessary ensure they don’t serve in congress." Rep. Mikie Sherill, 1/13/21

Yesterday, to no one's surprise, Kevin McCarthy climbed out of his ventriloquist dummy case long enough to bonelessly toddle to the nearest microphone to say, in a voice that suspiciously sounded like Trump's, that he opposed the formation of a January 6th commission. And just today, Moscow Mitch McConnell said (The English translation from the original Russian is here) that he, too, is opposed to the unformed commission on the grounds that it would be "slanted."

    There's hardly anything surprising about any of this, except perhaps the House Democrats' strong push for a commission, in the first place. Firstly, Congressional Commissions have a horrible track record from the JFK Assassination Commission to the 911 Commission. Secondly, unlike Kennedy's assassination and the 911 attacks, January 6th showed us the actual people involved in the attack on the Capitol. Courtesy of the FBI and the DOJ, we also have over 450 names of the rioters, about half the ones who'd actually breached the Capitol building.

    So we hardly need a commission costing tens of millions in taxpayer dollars to tell us who'd breached the Capitol, why and at whose behest. If the damning evidence brought forth by the Democratic impeachment managers during Trump's second impeachment trial last winter, didn't make that abundantly obvious, nothing will.

     Lastly, the proposal's passage is hardly guaranteed in the House on account of all the Blue Dogs in it and virtually the entire Democratic caucus, with its razor-thin majority, would need to vote for it to counter the inevitable Republican opposition to it. Then, even if it passes in the lower chamber, it would then go to Mitch McConnell's legislative morgue where it would then require a 60 vote super majority just to achieve a cloture vote. Which is simply not going to happen unless we can think of a way to clone Vice President Harris nine times and give every clone a tie-breaking vote.

     But the sole value that can be found in the House Democrats' push for a commission is what it had forced the Republicans in both chambers to do. It forced them to choose between democracy and anarchist mob rule, between truth and falsehoods. And, inevitably, the Grand Old Party proudly side-stepped on the wrong side of history.

     And their lockstep decision had little if anything to do with Trump or his mindless minions that had carried out the failed insurrection. It doesn't even have much to do with not letting damning facts get out because, as stated, through news reports, interviews, idiotically boastful social media accounts of the rioters, last winter's impeachment trial, congressional testimonies and the government's own charges, most if not all the facts have come out. The fat cat's out of the bag and he's sitting in Bedminster, New Jersey awaiting extradition across the Hudson.

     No, the real reason why the Republicans oppose the formation of a January 6th commission is that they're hoping, the next time someone cries "Foul!" over losing an election, the next insurrection will work. Another, more successful, riot is their ace in the hole.

HR3233's the Charm

 

The fix was in before the sixth.

    A bit long for a Twitter hashtag but you can't deny it's catchy. Right after the insurrection, we'd begun hearing stories from other members of Congress charging unnamed Republican congressmen of giving guided tours just a day before the riots. The first of those allegations came from Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ 11). 

     In fact, just today, Sherrill forcefully called for the January 6 Commission, or HR 3233, to be passed.

     But what's of greater interest, and possibly greater efficacy, was Sherrill's accusation in a Facebook Live video in which she'd claimed certain House Republicans were giving guided tours on January 5th. We have plenty of security footage from within the Capitol on January 6th documenting the riots. So Sherrill's accusations beg the inevitable question: Where's the security footage from January 5th? To date, I don't think anyone outside the government has reviewed a second of that footage from that day or in all the preceding days before the riots. (Note, as Sherrill had in her January 13 Facebook Live, tours throughout the Capitol were banned March last year because of the pandemic)

     Show us the footage and we'll see who the congressional co-conspirators are.

    But guided tours, handily explaining how some of the rioters knew exactly where to get to where they wanted to be, was just recon, the tip of the iceberg in a much vaster plan. Also, well in advance of the insurrection, well in advance of election day, the PR blitz started from the top of the GOP's dung pile: Donald Trump was already noisily sowing doubt in the mail in ballots, knowing they'd skew heavily Democratic. To that end, he'd installed right wing meat puppet, GOP mega donor and professional rat fucker Louis DeJoy to ensure the ballots wouldn't get out in time.

     Then Iowa's right wingers rammed through their own voter suppression bill. Then Georgia followed suit with their voter suppression bill that was so noxious is moved the All Star Game from Atlanta to Denver and touched off a cold war between Republicans and their employers in Big Business. As Doyle McManus wrote in the LA Times:

    "But other, less visible actions may be even more important. In at least 36 states, Republican legislators have proposed laws to weaken the autonomy of local election officials and put more power over vote-counting in the hands of legislators... In Georgia, for example, the same law that criminalized giving water to thirsty voters also gave the Legislature the right to appoint the chair of the state election board — and gave the board the right to take over a county’s election management."

    Throw in vote caging, voter purging, reducing polling places, drop boxes and early voting hours, gerrymandering and every other dirty right wing trick in the book, then add in a healthy dose of Republican truth repudiation both before and after the riots, that's proof positive that the GOP is not interested in a commanding majority but a 1% mandate. They know their positions are not that popular but as long as they have that 1% mandate that was so crucial in the Bush II years, incumbency and the tyranny of the majority will do the rest.

     Even if they have to override the will and voice of the very people who'd ignorantly put them there. And the GOP's opposition to a January 6 Commission is screamingly obvious- They don't want the rest of the trade secrets to get out because they're not done refining and reusing them.