Past is Prologue: January 6th Commission Edition

Ashli Babbitt moments before her fatal shooting as she tried to breech the Speaker’s Lobby during the January 6th Capitol Riot

The House of Representatives passed a measure to create a January 6th commission to investigate the capitol riot that invaded that very chamber, among other things.

Thirty-five House Republicans joined Democrats Wednesday in voting to create a bipartisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, risking the wrath of former President Donald Trump and flouting GOP leaders who condemned the proposal as unfairly partisan and unneeded.

The Republican mavericks were led by New York Rep. John Katko, who wrote the measure with Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss. Katko, that panel’s top Republican, was battling two tides that have overwhelmed Congress in recent years: the nearly overwhelming potency Trump still has among Republicans and a jagged-edged partisanship that often confounds even mundane legislation.

“I encourage all members, Republicans and Democrats alike, to put down their swords for once, just for once, and support this bill,” Katko said before the House approved the measure.

The 35 defectors represented a relatively modest but significant slice of House Republicans, of whom 175 opposed the legislation. Their defiance underscored the party’s rift as some lawmakers supported an investigation of the shocking and violent Capitol attack while leaders tried to avoid enraging the former president, whose support they believe they’ll need to win House control in the 2022 elections.

All 10 Republicans who voted in January to impeach Trump for encouraging his supporters to storm the Capitol supported the commission. Most of the 35 Republicans backing the commission were moderates.

The measure’s prospects in the Senate faces the opposition of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell who came out against the measure.

He said he opposes the legislation because it is a “slanted and unbalanced proposal” a day after he said his members were open to voting for the plan but needed a chance to read the “fine print.” In between those comments, Trump released a statement Tuesday evening slamming the bill and decrying it as a “Democrat trap” while urging McConnell and other GOP leaders to start “listening.”

“It’s not at all clear what new facts or additional investigation yet another commission could actually lay on top of existing efforts by law enforcement and Congress,” McConnell said on the floor Wednesday. Several questions remain about the attack, however, including to what degree it was coordinated as well as details about what Trump was doing while it was taking place.

The attempts to undermine support for the commission by McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) are the latest evidence of the party’s continued loyalty to Trump and the fear among its leaders that crossing him will imperil their positions and the GOP’s efforts to win back both houses of Congress next year.

For Republicans, fealty to Trump’s election falsehood becomes defining loyalty test

While McConnell and McCarthy both slammed the deal as partisan and duplicative, despite its being struck between the Democratic and Republican leaders of the House Homeland Security Committee, other Republicans were more direct about their concerns that the commission’s work would be politically problematic for the party.

“Anything that gets us rehashing the 2020 election, I think, is a day lost on being able to draw contrast between us and the Democrats’ very radical left-wing agenda,” said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the minority whip.

That last quote is the sticky part here for Republicans. Taking the lead from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy the “let’s move on” plan has, aside from the moral cowardice of it, one really big glaring problem. Coming soon to a rally near you, former president Trump is expected to hit the road again, and has made no secret that his priority aside from his own designs is to get revenge on any Republican that voted against him in certifying the 2020 election, the second impeachment, and various other slights real and perceived. The “Anything that gets us rehashing the 2020 election” is going to be the very thing McCarthy and company have decided to hitch their wagon to in order to cross into the promise land of a House majority, the speakership McCarthy felt was stolen from him in 2015, and a return to power: Donald Trump and his supporters. They see that 74 million voters for the former president in 2020 and sense they need that to get what they want.

But that brings them right back to the thing-that-should-not-be-named for them, January 6th. How many of the 74 million feel like they do, want to move on, and want to just not talk about it like McCarthy does? Or, more to the point, how many are in the hardcore Trump camp that, like the former president, are never going to stop talking about 2020, defending January 6th, and insisting Donald J. Trump is then, now, and forever “their” president? How many others saw the capitol occupied by MAGA clad throngs and far from a lost cause saw something they never want to see again? How many Americans with their short attention spans and even shorter memories will just move on of their own according regardless? And just how much difference would a January 6th commission that would inevitably devolve into the usual congressional grandstanding in changing anyone’s mind about any of it?

Thus, faced with those questions and many others, the Republican leadership has decided to roll with the politically expedient option of “let’s move on”. The practical application of which, for a political party and the individual members, is always socially acceptable nomenclature for the true meaning of “what course gets me power & money”. Republicans want the power of the majority back, and want the votes and the fundraising that comes from the Trump faithful. They don’t want to relitigate January 6th, or 2020 for that matter. To get the former though, they will have to navigate both their own admitted leader and the Democratic Party relentlessly talking about the latter. Whether the January 6th commission happens or not, one way or the other the House Republicans have not heard the last of recent past.