Republicans Resist Commission In Effort To Gaslight Americans Over January 6 Insurrection

House vote set for Wednesday on commission to study deadly riot

Republicans, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif), are doing everything that they can to sink — or at least discredit — the formation of a bipartisan commission to probe the deadly January 6 Capitol insurrection.

It's all part of the coordinated effort to try to gaslight the American people into simply trying to convince the rioters who overran the halls of Congress meant no harm.

Republican Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia reached new levels of incredulity — and depravity — as the freshman sat last week on a congressional dias and lied, just lied, by saying that the insurrectionists who invaded the Capitol equipped with zip ties to subdue lawmakers they might encounter were mere “tourists.”

Clyde's crime against his oath was compounded when video surfaced showing he was a lawmaker setting up makeshift barricades on January 6 to guard against the roaming gangs of rioters.

Yeah, “tourists,” indeed!

Clyde is hardly the only Republican playing this game.

Kevin McCarthy got himself on Fox News to try to pretend that we just don't need another investigation into January 6.

"There's already four investigations. You mentioned one," McCarthy told host Laura Ingraham. "The Department of Justice already has arrested 445 people, with approximately another 100 arrests to come. This would just get in the way of that. You have two investigations going on in Senate committees. You also have the architect of the Capitol was given $10 million to have a full review of the Capitol and ways to secure it. And now we want to put a political commission to go forward?”

That's the point point of the commission being bipartisan, Mr Leader: So it won't be “political.”

Me thinks he doth protest too much…

The truth is that for a violent insurrection such as January 6 — which sought to overturn democracy itself — there can hardly be “too many investigations.”

And, of course, the Queen of QAnon and she of the “Jewish space lasers” wouldn't be left out.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's argument, such as it was, was nothing but a mash-up of the right-wing's “greatest hits” of false accusations, false equivalencies and whataboutisms.

“We should back the blue because they certainly back us. Also, while it's catch and release for domestic terrorists, Antifa, BLM, the people who breached the Capitol on January 6 are being abused, some even being held for 23 hours a day in solitary confinement. So, Mr. Speaker, my questions are this: Who placed the pipes — pipe bombs at the RNC and the DNC, which is an attack on both Republicans and Democrats? Why was President Trump's request on January 5 for 10,000 National Guard denied, and who denied it? And what chain of command did they follow? Also, who killed Ashli Babbitt, and why is that not being revealed? Does her family not deserve justice?”

Actually, no, Congresswoman.

Ashli Babbitt was delivered justice when she was shot — properly so — for breaking into a chamber unauthorized where a high-level protectee, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was being sheltered.

Meanwhile, back in reality, Democratic Rep Madeline Dean of Pennsylvania called out McCarthy for his bizarre, frankly unamerican, leadership which allows this Republican wink-and-nod to insurrectionists to fester.

“McCarthy had said one thing and then within a day or two he reverses himself. So this is leadership really struggling with itself to figure out who it is, but very, very clearly, I think Mr. McCarthy does not want to subject himself or his members to subpoenas," Dean said. "I was there on January 6. I was in the chamber. I was escorted out with many other members and members of the journalistic community and staff in a gas mask. We were all dangerously close to destruction, to mayhem and to death. And again and again I will say thank you, Capitol Police, for saving so many lives.

"Mr. McCarthy was there. He knows how dangerous January 6 was. He should welcome this commission. And if it should find any facts or circumstances that lead down other paths, so be it. But I don’t know what he’s afraid of, and why he's protecting us, the American public against the facts. After all, for us to move on, we have to know exactly what happened here,” she added. “You can’t just brush this one under the rug. Because if we do that, we are dangerously close to suffering this again.”

And it's not only Democratic lawmakers. There's a wide expectation in the country that Republicans must be held accountable — that they cannot simply skate for supporting Donald Trump's “big lie” that somehow the presidential election was “stolen” from him or for those Republicans who supported the insurrectionists that day….

The bipartisan commission, to be voted on in the House Wednesday, will move the nation one more step towards that crucial accountability.