“My Senate Republican colleagues must now ask themselves: Are they going to join us in pursuing the truth, or are they going to cover for Donald Trump and his big lie?” asked Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer after 35 Republicans joined with every single Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives to create an “independent” commission to investigate the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, and send the bill over to Schumer’s Senate.
Schumer’s acerbic comment demonstrates that the creation of a supposedly independent commission to investigate exactly what happened on January 6, when a mob went into the Capitol while Congress was considering whether to accept all of the electoral vote counts from the states as legitimate, is all about politics, not “truth.” By saying that a vote against the special commission would be a vote to “cover for Donald Trump and his big lie,” Schumer clearly indicated that he had already reached a conclusion. It reminds one of the old Western movies and TV shows when someone would say, “we have to give him a fair trial before we hang him.”
The House voted Wednesday 252-175 to create the commission, with the votes of 35 House Republicans. Despite the bill’s passage in the House, it faces an uncertain fate in the Senate where Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has publicly opposed the effort. McConnell explained that an independent commission is unnecessary because there are “strong existing investigations” already underway in Congress and in the Justice Department.
But, of course, this is all in the eye of the beholder. Of course the independent commission is objectively unnecessary, unless the goal is not to pursue the truth, but to advance the narrative of the Democratic Party and their allies in the mainstream media.
It is not that the House Republicans who voted for the commission were not lauded. They were — by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the San Francisco Democrat. She said that “many Republicans have courageously withstood the — shall we say — the assault on our democracy that is going forth.” She had particular praise for the Republicans who supported the Democratic Party narrative that the last presidential election was “legitimate.”
Among those Republicans praised by Pelosi was Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming. “What happened that day must never happen again,” Cheney said, in explaining her vote to create the commission. “I urge the Senate to pass the bipartisan 1/6 commission bill. Some things must be above politics.”
One Republican, Representative French Hill of Arkansas, had a different explanation for his vote in favor of the commission’s creation. “I want answers from Speaker Pelosi on the lack of adequate security in the U.S. Capitol during that day.”
Hill is likely to be disappointed if he really expects that the commission will in any way criticize Speaker Pelosi. By the remarks made by Pelosi herself, it is quite obvious that the commission’s purpose is to ensure that the general public is convinced that former President Trump had something to do with the events of January 6. As McConnell noted in announcing his opposition to the bill, the Democrats would be making the staff appointments.
The commission is less about the past than about the future — specifically the 2022 congressional elections, in which the Republicans stand an excellent chance of winning control of both the House and the Senate. As such, the Democrats are desperately looking for something that will distract the public from the disaster of the Biden presidency, combined with the rule of Congress by the Democrats and their two leaders, Schumer and Pelosi.
Those Republicans who voted to create a commission designed to give a partisan advantage to Democrats are either naïve, cowardly, or are actually sympathetic to the causes promoted by the Democrats. Trump zeroed in on this factor in his response to the vote.
“Democrats stick together, the Republicans don’t. They don’t have the Romney’s, Little Ben Sasse’s and Cheney’s of the world. Unfortunately, we do,” Trump said.
Republican Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma explained why he considered the commission a bad idea. He argued that it was too narrowly focused. Instead, Cole said that any such commission should examine other examples of political violence over the past five years. “This includes the wave of violent rioting and property destruction that swept across the country last summer.”
One such act of violence that the Democrats would just as soon forget was the attempted murder of Republican congressmen at a baseball practice (getting ready for the annual Democrat vs. Republican baseball game) by a Democratic Party activist and supporter of Senator Bernie Sanders. Had the victims been Democrats and the perpetrator been a Ted Cruz or Rand Paul supporter, we would still not have heard the last of it. However, in this case, the politicized Federal Bureau of Investigation said they did not consider that attack political! This was their supposed conclusion, despite the fact that the perpetrator specifically asked if the baseball practice was the Republican practice, and he had pictures of Republican members on his person.
It is possible that the Republicans will be able to prevent the commission’s creation with a filibuster in the Senate, but if the Democrats do succeed in getting it passed — which would necessitate the help of some Republicans — we already know the content of the final report it would produce before it is even written. Schumer has already decreed it.
