Cover Your Neighbor’s Ass as You Would Cover Your Own.

Two people who should be out of a job.

Kevin McCarthy is screwed.  

Rightly so. How is he screwed? He just showed the country and his own party just how weak a ‘leader’ he is. He sent Rep John Katko (R-NY) to negotiate with the Democrats over the makeup and reach of the January 6th commission, adding a bunch of demands that McCarthy figured the Democrats would never go for; equal representation, subpoena power for both parties, with both the chair and vice-chair having to agree on the issuing of the subpoenas, you know stuff the GOP would never agree to. You just have to look at the biased Benghazi ‘investigations’, controlled by a Republican majority and designed to drive down Hilary Clinton’s polls numbers (which McCarthy admitted) for proof of what McCarthy thinks is a ‘fair’ committee. He figured the Democrats wanted a political witch hunt, because that’s exactly what he would do, so he would undermined it from the start.

While Katko negotiated in good faith, McCarthy gave him nothing but a bottle of what he figured were poison pills to offer the Democrats. The problem was, McCarthy was too cynical for his own good. He figured the whole investigation was a show, ‘insurrection theatre’ designed to just embarrass the GOP. He was wrong. The Democrats actually accepted the GOP demands. They wanted a bi-partisan commission, and they agreed to just that. Katko succeeded when he was supposed to fail, so that when he failed, McCarthy could show that the whole thing was a cynical ploy by Pelosi and the Democrats. Checkmate!

The political cynicism though was all on McCarthy, like pie on Stan Laurel. His version of 3-D chess was actually one-finger checkers, and he had just jumped himself. Hard. Now, he had to deny his own deal, lie about it, calling it a one-sided sham (it wasn’t), and throw his own hand-picked negotiator under the bus. And then back it up over him. He demanded his members vote against the bill, and the GOP House Whip, Steve Scalise announced he would whip his members against the commission.

Kevin and Steve failed.  

35 Republicans broke with their leadership to support the commission. 35. Might not seem a huge number (it should be much bigger, really) but to the credibility of McCarthy’s leadership, and to the extreme partisanship of the GOP, this is a foghorn, a wrecking ball, a Spinal Tap goes-to-eleven feedback blast.

It’s an embarrassment. And all poor Kevin’s fault.

Word is leaking out that many members were pissed off over McCarty’s shameful treatment of Katko, and they just couldn’t go along with the transparent nonsense of ‘peaceful tourists’ invading the Capitol on January 6th to take selfies and admire statues. They remember hiding behind seats, barricading themselves in their offices, fearing for their lives while armed officers kept the insurrectionists at bay with pointed weapons on the floor of the US House of Representatives. They remember calling family to tell them they loved them one last time.

Like the Democrats, those 35 Republicans want answers, Kevin McCarthy be damned.

But…

Oh, there’s always a ‘but’ with today’s GOP, isn’t there? 175 Republicans — That’s 84% of the Republican conference — voted to memory-hole the insurrection. Voted to shrug and walk away. Like they did at both impeachments, like they’ve done over and over since 2015 when Trump descended that ridiculous gold escalator and started his campaign against democracy. A campaign that in January turned into open warfare.

175 Republicans who would rather let Trump and his insurrections control their party than stand up for democracy, stand up to the very people who came to kill them. Make no mistake, the people who stormed the Capitol, by their own account, were armed and looking for blood. Trump has sent out his orders about the commission on his pitiful little blog calling it a “democrat trap” to “shut it down” and they bowed and tried.

Then Mitch McConnell joined in. Both McConnell and McCarthy after the insurrection, blamed Trump. Both said he was culpable. Both have now forgotten all about that, preferring to toe the Trump line and undermine democracy. It’s what Donny would do (is doing), after all. McConnell will now direct the Senate to vote against the commission because… vague reasons. He cited overlap with the DOJ investigation, which he knows is a criminal one, not one into the origins of the mob and the violence. He has no real reason or excuses, except protecting the guilty infesting his own party.

Cover your neighbor’s ass as you would cover your own.

It is essential not only for the GOP to kill the commission, but to hide why they want to kill it. They love to go on about ‘re-litigating 2020’ (isn’t that what these Republican demands for recounts are?), but what they’re really afraid of isn’t exposing the past, it’s the threat of daylight on their on-going campaign against democracy, to undermine confidence in our elections and their fairness. They are laying the groundwork, right in the open, to deny the electoral victory of a Democratic candidate and install a losing Republican one, regardless of the outcome.

They’ll do it, or will at least try.

That’s why the commission must die.

With the bill for the commission now passed in the House, it will go to the Senate, where it will surely be filibustered. If all the Democrats vote for it, that means they have to get 10 Republicans to cross party lines for it to pass. Don’t hold your breath. McConnell has a much better hold on his caucus than McCarthy, and few have shown much will to buck him. I can see a few that might; Romney, Murkowski, maybe Collins. Maybe there are enough secret, closeted Republican senators that will put country over party.

This is where we are, hoping that sanity will break out in the GOP, and enough will step forward to actually do the right thing.

This is where we are.

It’s Not You, Democracy, It’s Them

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, attempting to demonstrate with his hands how far the GOP is from reality. His hands can’t go that wide.

Kevin McCarthy needs to see if he can rent back his balls from Donald Trump long enough to support the investigation into the January 6th insurrection. After all, it was negotiated by his own representative, signed off on by him, and was supposed to move forward. But now?

Now he doesn’t like it anymore.

Evidently, he got another friendly call from Mar-a-Largo because Donny doesn’t want an investigation. Of course he doesn’t. And now Kevin doesn’t either. Not anymore, anyway. Trump is against it, as is most of the GOP, because they are complicit; they supported it, they either went along with the lies that inspired the mobs, broadcasted the lies themselves, or said nothing and hoped it would go away like a bill that comes due when your bank account is empty.  

If we just don’t answer the knocking, it’ll stop, they’ll just go away. But they didn’t. They came back with a battering ram, looking for blood. Not metaphorical blood, actual blood. McCarthy is guilty of going along, of trying to stop democracy, of voting to kill it before it threw his unpopular party and its equally unpopular president out of power. After a period of a day or so where they pretended regret, trying to see where political chips were going to fall, they’ve sprung back into ‘Big Lie’ mode, denying the insurrection and supporting Trump’s continued spewed lunacies.  

The ‘Big Lie’ of the stolen election is now the Republican battleplan of taking power in DC and the states; keep telling your voters they were cheated, that they have actual grievances, that the election and their rightful president were stolen from them. Keep the base angry, seething, ready to storm the polling places and vote for anything Trump and the GOP tell them. Get them angry and near violence and keep them there.

Just not too angry and violent. It’s a subtle and deadly dance, like a replay of the classic French film ‘The Wages of Fear’, only this time it’s not truckers hauling degrading nitro, it’s the GOP playing with the nitro emotions and violence that their most extreme voters are capable of, both already on abundant display long before 1/6.

The Democrats must move ahead on the investigation, without the GOP. They will never cooperate anyway. Hell, they only regret the insurrection didn’t succeed, democracy be damned. A new CBS poll asked GOP voters that if they were a party consultant, would they focus on developing a message and “popular policies and ideas” to win over more voters? Or would they prioritize changes to the voting rules in states and districts?

Almost half the GOP, 47%, went with screwing voters, with making sure ‘those’ people don’t vote. You know, you and me. 2/3rds pledged loyalty to Trump, and thought getting rid of Liz Cheney, a far-right conservative who voted with Trump some 93% of the time, was a good idea. Not loyal enough. Insufficiently ready to steal coming elections.

They are done with democracy. It’s no longer giving them what they need. No, it’s not you, democracy, it’s them. Totally on them, they’re done, they want a divorce.

It’s now up to the Democratic Party to show that democracy can be saved, that it can work. The 1/6 investigation is needed to show the agenda of the GOP, to show the country where the rot is and how deep it goes. The Democrats will have to stop playing nice as usual, stop playing defense and start playing offense. Nancy and Chuck need to go it alone, while they still can.

2022 is coming at us like a freight train, we can hear its mournful whistle in the distance and soon it’ll be too late to get off the tracks.

We have to make sure we’re on that train and not in front of it.