GOP Killing The Jan 6th Investigation Bill Was A BLUNDER

 

The House-passed bill to create a bipartisan committee to investigate the January 6th Capitol riot was a gift to the Republican Party. The committee would have had 5 Democratic and 5 Republican members. That would have given Republicans control over the subpoenas issued by the committee (since 6 members would have to agree to issue a subpoena), and it would have given them an equal say in the report issued by the committee. It was the best of all possible outcomes for the GOP.

That makes it weird that most House Republicans voted against the bill, and Senate Republicans filibustered it when it arrived. And when Majority Leader Schumer tried to invoke cloture to stop that filibuster, enough Republicans voted against that to keep the filibuster alive. In effect, that killed the bill.

Does this mean there will be no investigation in Congress? Not at all! It just means there won't be a bipartisan investigation. Speaker Pelosi will make sure the investigation proceeds. She could assign the investigation to a standing House committee (like Intelligence or Judiciary), or she could create a new committee in the House to do the investigation. Either way, Democrats will control the committee by having the most members, and will be able to issue any subpoena they want (without being blocked by the Republicans). And they will be able to run that committee investigation for as long as they want -- maybe right up until the 2022 election.

If any Republican thought they had killed an investigation that would hurt them in the 2022 election, they were very wrong. All they did was give up any control they might have had in any investigation.

Minority Leader McConnell is smart enough to know this. You might wonder why he did such a stupid thing. It was to save his job. Donald Trump, and his base supporters, are not smart enough to know they were giving up control over the investigation -- so they opposed the committee's creation. And if McConnell had not actively opposed the committee's creation it could easily have cost him his leadership position. Trump and his minions would have demanded that.

Any way you look at it, the Senate Republicans committed a MASSIVE BLUNDER in killing the creation of the January 6th bipartisan investigation committee!