Two things that have been most astonishingly absent from American politics over the years are:
- Democrats willing to “press the battle” against a Republican Party that has been hijacked by a destructive force over the past generation, willing — in order to defend America -- to match the intensity, and the determination to prevail, that the Republicans have consistently brought to their assault on pretty much everything that’s been best in America.
- Republicans (in Congress) with the moral integrity to denounce what their party has become, letting the chips fall where they may regarding their own political future. (We have heard worthwhile statements from the likes of Bob Corker and Jeff Flake, and Mitt Romney has been willing to vote to convict the criminal President to whom almost all in his party are willing accomplices— but none of them have taken on the mission of consistently saying what needs to be said to the Republican base that is in thrall to the lies the rest of their Party are supporting.)
Yesterday was a good day: we got some of both.
Based on the Democrats’ history over the past almost two decades, one might reasonably have imagined that Nancy Pelosi would let the Republicans use their allotted spaces on the Committee to investigate the Insurrection of January 6 to sabotage the whole undertaking. One might have expected that — in the tradition of Democrats who have for years acquiesced in the subversions perpetrated by their “friends across the aisle — Speaker Pelosi would have accepted the presence of the likes of the atrocity from Ohio — Rep. Jim Jordan — on the Committee.
But no. It now appears that Pelosi has understood the quandary the Republicans are in, has set a trap for Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and then took full advantage of McCarthy’s stepping into it. She did not acquiesce, but rather drew a line that helped to expose dramatically the indefensible position of the Republicans regarding the Insurrection (and, through that, the rest of the ongoing assault on American democracy).
The quandary for the Republicans arises out of these components:
- The great majority of the American people oppose what happened on 1/6 and want that insurrectionary attack on our democracy to be thoroughly investigated;
- Any thorough investigation will reveal that much of the Republican Party operated shamelessly as part of that same drive to overturn a legitimate election as the insurrectionists sought to do;
- Some of the Republicans may have been witting accomplices of the insurrectionists themselves;
- The primary inciter of the Insurrection was Donald Trump;
- The Republican Party remains the willing servants of Trump because that is what the majority of the Republican base demands.
Only some combination of lies and sweeping the whole Insurrection down the memory hole can save the Republicans from paying a (potentially large) political price for that combination of ingredients.
It appears that this welcome aggressiveness from the Democratic Speaker of the House was coordinated with an equally welcome display of continuing integrity from the Republican representative from Wyoming, Lynne Cheney.
Rep. Cheney had already distinguished herself from the likes of Mitt Romney (and the others who have sold only part of their souls to protect their political standing) by standing firm in their telling the truth about the threats to our democracy and in their honoring their oath of office.
And she had continued on that path, apparently, by accepting Pelosi’s appointing her (along with seven Democrats) to serve on the 1/6 investigation committee. Then — yesterday — she showed that she’s not just doubling down, but is quadrupling down on her allegiance to the truth and the Constitution and against her Party’s lies and assault on American democracy.
Rep. Cheney — at that point the lone Republican on the Committee, after McCarthy withdrew all his nominees when he attacked Pelosi’s rejection of two whose words and actions showed clearly they’d seek to sabotage the investigation — was apparently ready to counter the Lying Republicans with a bold statement of her own.
“This investigation must go forward. The idea that anybody would be playing politics with an attack on the United States Capitol is despicable and is disgraceful, and I am absolutely dedicated and committed to making sure that this investigation holds those accountable who did this and ensures that it never happens again. And the American people deserve that, and that is what we are going to do.”
When asked about McCarthy’s suitability to be Speaker of the House in the event the Republicans were to win a majority in the 2022 election, Lynne Cheney minced no words:
I think that any person who would be third in line to the presidency must demonstrate a commitment to the Constitution and a commitment to the rule of law, and Minority Leader McCarthy has not done that.
Cheney did not say that she’d coordinated her statement with Pelosi, but the one-two punch had all the appearances of a jointly planned attack on the dominant spirit of the Trumpian Party in Congress— a spirit that, in Cheney’s words for the Republican leader in the House, is “despicable and disgraceful.”
How refreshing to see such a tag-team out there in the arena, pressing the battle: Democrats willing to strike, Republicans determined to act with integrity.