Nancy Pelosi couldn't possibly let Jim Jordan on the special committee to investigate the Jan. 6 insurrection. She couldn't let Jim Banks on it, either, after he trashed it before it even began.
She gave Kevin McCarthy a win-win, at least in his eyes. For now, her rejection of his proposed list of Republicans gives him, and them, these advantages:
- It allows them to pose as victims;
- It allows them to make Pelosi look mean;
- It allows them to make Liz Cheney, the only Republican member remaining on the committee, look like a collaborator, something that's starting to have wartime status of ignominy;
- By pulling the entire proposed list of Republican members, it gives McCarthy the opportunity (and the requirement) to look tough in the face of 'injustice', enhancing his status to become Speaker in case the Republicans, who are also busy quashing voting opportunities, should regain the House majority in 2023;
- Another chance to try to deflect negative attention toward their legitimately defeated standard-bearer; and, most importantly,
- With the claim that Republicans will hold their own investigation, another chance to create another scenario that looks legitimate, but isn't.
Fictionalization is an important part of being Republican these days. Of course voting has to be legally limited; there's plenty of fraud out there. Of course gun rights must be liberalized; the right to have a gun supersedes government's concerns about hurting people. Of course nobody can be made to get vaccine shots; their individual rights supersede my rights to be free from getting disease from them. Of course the 1/6 commission must be opposed; the whole thing has been blown out of proportion anyhow.
The strategy is bold-faced:
- Hide what you don't like (as in the so-called Kavanaugh investigation);
- Deny it if it's discovered, or at the very least admit nothing;
- Minimize it; and/or
- Throw it back to the other side by pretending they've done worse.
For style points, they've copied everything their defeated, exposed standard-bearer has done and continues to do. Which, of course, pleases him. Which, of course, is now required.
The moment McCarthy decided to visit the defeated president at Mar-A-Lago and continue his legitimization was the moment from which the Republican Party decided to hitch itself to him forever--not in victory, for that's easy, but in defeat, from which it could have pushed itself away and explained it as a failed experiment. Instead, he, and it, chose to stick itself in the mud and play the manipulation game, fixing the state voting systems and make Electoral College verification contingent not on numbers, but on political approval. That showdown will be awful and could destroy our democracy.
McCarthy does not care. That can be solved later. He thinks he has this all figured out: Just demonstrate that you're still loyal to the person who thinks he still should be president (and who, along with Mr. Pillow, thinks he'll be reinstated next month), and you'll keep the required number of Republican Congresspeople on your side. But that isn't going to work. He thinks he's so smart, but, like millions, he's just as naive as ever.
It doesn't matter about the displays of loyalty. It doesn't matter about not making someone angry. When he chooses to turn on you, he will. Nothing else will matter. If he wishes, he will write McCarthy off in a moment, in a comment of dispersion, and that will be that. All that work of McCarthy's at being all that balanced, all that effort at being so, so careful, will have been for nothing. Not even unflagging loyalty will matter. One thing he has said at another time, taken out of context, will do the trick.
It'll be McCarthy's turn to get thrown off the wagon, and not one regretful moment will be had. That McCarthy still does not understand this is incredible and almost sad, except his weaseling has been so off-putting that, once shunted to the side of the road, he will soon be forgotten. He is facing that and he will not be saved from it.
He has, also, helped twist the truth so far out of sync that trying to return to it will be unsatisfying and useless. For Republicans are now caught in a exitless, downhill freeway of lies and exaggerations that can't be curbed. Explaining oneself isn't necessary now; you just make up yet another reality and travel down that spur. The nonsense they will now be forced to concoct due to the attempted insurrection has already been floated, willy-nilly, through ersatz media outlets; they will now be combined in a polished package of utterly ridiculous anti-logic.
Too many people are still insisting to rely on this. Too many won't get their vaccine shots, even though Republicans here and there have awoken to this poppycock. (Such as Alabama's governor, who now sees that her state, too, can become one enormous hot spot.) It's all still a toxic stew, and no facts can or will reverse it but the direct facing of danger and disaster.
We spill toward an enormous tragedy of incredible proportions, all because of stoked fear and refusal to accept what the facts are saying--about the climate, about the plague, about the potential end of democracy. It points toward 2022 being as vital as 2018 was about stopping the mindlessness and keeping the foothold of rationality, as tenuous as it may be.
Kevin McCarthy believes that for him, this will be a win-win. It will, instead, be a lose-lose.
Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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