Both Sides Now

As expected, Senate Republicans yesterday blocked a House proposal for a bipartisan commission to investigate the events of January 6th.

They did so even though Democrats had agreed to every Republican demand regarding the makeup and operating procedures of that commission (i.e., called the GOP’s bluff). They did so even as members of the Capitol Police who lived through the Insurrection and the surviving family members of one of their number who was killed in it, Officer Brian Sicknick, stood outside their offices and pleaded with them to investigate the matter. (So much for “Back the Blue.”) They did so even though they represent the same party that bypassed even the pretense of bipartisanship in standing up a House committee that spent years and millions of taxpayer dollars investigating Benghazi, for what Rep. Kevin McCarthy openly admitted — bragged, in fact — was a partisan attempt to hurt Hillary Clinton.

The Republicans’ reasons for this refusal are laughable and can find purchase only among the most tribal and already Kool-Aid besotted. Only six of 50 GOP Senators voted yes (Romney, Murkowski, Cassidy, Portman, Sasse, and Collins), one less than voted to impeach Trump over that same atrocity last February. The others, even those who briefly broke with Trump in the immediate aftermath of the Insurrection, have apparently come to believe that it’s in the Party’s best interests to…