Cover Your Neighbor’s Ass as You Would Cover Your Own.

Two people who should be out of a job.

Kevin McCarthy is screwed.  

Rightly so. How is he screwed? He just showed the country and his own party just how weak a ‘leader’ he is. He sent Rep John Katko (R-NY) to negotiate with the Democrats over the makeup and reach of the January 6th commission, adding a bunch of demands that McCarthy figured the Democrats would never go for; equal representation, subpoena power for both parties, with both the chair and vice-chair having to agree on the issuing of the subpoenas, you know stuff the GOP would never agree to. You just have to look at the biased Benghazi ‘investigations’, controlled by a Republican majority and designed to drive down Hilary Clinton’s polls numbers (which McCarthy admitted) for proof of what McCarthy thinks is a ‘fair’ committee. He figured the Democrats wanted a political witch hunt, because that’s exactly what he would do, so he would undermined it from the start.

While Katko negotiated in good faith, McCarthy gave him nothing but a bottle of what he figured were poison pills to offer the Democrats. The problem was, McCarthy was too cynical for his own good. He figured the whole investigation was a show, ‘insurrection theatre’ designed to just embarrass the GOP. He was wrong. The Democrats actually accepted the GOP demands. They wanted a bi-partisan commission, and they agreed to just that. Katko succeeded when he was supposed to fail, so that when he failed, McCarthy could show that the whole thing was a cynical ploy by Pelosi and the Democrats. Checkmate!

The political cynicism though was all on McCarthy, like pie on Stan Laurel. His version of 3-D chess was actually one-finger checkers, and he had just jumped himself. Hard. Now, he had to deny his own deal, lie about it, calling it a one-sided sham (it wasn’t), and throw his own hand-picked negotiator under the bus. And then back it up over him. He demanded his members vote against the bill, and the GOP House Whip, Steve Scalise announced he would whip his members against the commission.

Kevin and Steve failed.  

35 Republicans broke with their leadership to support the commission. 35. Might not seem a huge number (it should be much bigger, really) but to the credibility of McCarthy’s leadership, and to the extreme partisanship of the GOP, this is a foghorn, a wrecking ball, a Spinal Tap goes-to-eleven feedback blast.

It’s an embarrassment. And all poor Kevin’s fault.

Word is leaking out that many members were pissed off over McCarty’s shameful treatment of Katko, and they just couldn’t go along with the transparent nonsense of ‘peaceful tourists’ invading the Capitol on January 6th to take selfies and admire statues. They remember hiding behind seats, barricading themselves in their offices, fearing for their lives while armed officers kept the insurrectionists at bay with pointed weapons on the floor of the US House of Representatives. They remember calling family to tell them they loved them one last time.

Like the Democrats, those 35 Republicans want answers, Kevin McCarthy be damned.

But…

Oh, there’s always a ‘but’ with today’s GOP, isn’t there? 175 Republicans — That’s 84% of the Republican conference — voted to memory-hole the insurrection. Voted to shrug and walk away. Like they did at both impeachments, like they’ve done over and over since 2015 when Trump descended that ridiculous gold escalator and started his campaign against democracy. A campaign that in January turned into open warfare.

175 Republicans who would rather let Trump and his insurrections control their party than stand up for democracy, stand up to the very people who came to kill them. Make no mistake, the people who stormed the Capitol, by their own account, were armed and looking for blood. Trump has sent out his orders about the commission on his pitiful little blog calling it a “democrat trap” to “shut it down” and they bowed and tried.

Then Mitch McConnell joined in. Both McConnell and McCarthy after the insurrection, blamed Trump. Both said he was culpable. Both have now forgotten all about that, preferring to toe the Trump line and undermine democracy. It’s what Donny would do (is doing), after all. McConnell will now direct the Senate to vote against the commission because… vague reasons. He cited overlap with the DOJ investigation, which he knows is a criminal one, not one into the origins of the mob and the violence. He has no real reason or excuses, except protecting the guilty infesting his own party.

Cover your neighbor’s ass as you would cover your own.

It is essential not only for the GOP to kill the commission, but to hide why they want to kill it. They love to go on about ‘re-litigating 2020’ (isn’t that what these Republican demands for recounts are?), but what they’re really afraid of isn’t exposing the past, it’s the threat of daylight on their on-going campaign against democracy, to undermine confidence in our elections and their fairness. They are laying the groundwork, right in the open, to deny the electoral victory of a Democratic candidate and install a losing Republican one, regardless of the outcome.

They’ll do it, or will at least try.

That’s why the commission must die.

With the bill for the commission now passed in the House, it will go to the Senate, where it will surely be filibustered. If all the Democrats vote for it, that means they have to get 10 Republicans to cross party lines for it to pass. Don’t hold your breath. McConnell has a much better hold on his caucus than McCarthy, and few have shown much will to buck him. I can see a few that might; Romney, Murkowski, maybe Collins. Maybe there are enough secret, closeted Republican senators that will put country over party.

This is where we are, hoping that sanity will break out in the GOP, and enough will step forward to actually do the right thing.

This is where we are.

Your Vote is Illegitimate

“The only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged.”

If you don’t vote Trump, your vote doesn’t matter, and can be rejected. End of story.

This is the message Trump is telling his supporters, telling them that the other side, no matter who they are, are illegitimate; their votes are illegitimate, their opposition is illegitimate, their opinions are illegitimate, their protests are illegitimate, they, themselves, their lives, friends and families, are illegitimate. It’s okay to ignore them, okay to treat them as less, okay to maybe kill them, they’re illegitimate after all. As his HHS assistant secretary Michael Caputo said: “And when Donald Trump refuses to stand down at the inauguration, the shooting will begin. The drills that you’ve seen are nothing,” he added, “If you carry guns, buy ammunition, ladies and gentlemen, because it’s going to be hard to get.”

Okay to kill those who disagree with you; they are other, they are wrong in themselves, they are dangerous, they are illegitimate.

Trump also claims the Governor of Nevada, Steve Sisolak (D) “is the same guy that’s gonna be in charge of the ballots. I’m winning that state easily (he’s not) but the one thing we can’t beat, if they cheat on the ballots, now he will cheat on the ballots, I have no doubt about it.”

Trump is giving himself and his supporters permission to ignore the results of a fair election. Any election he loses is not a fair election. Any election he loses needs to be resisted, fought against, and put down.

Arm yourselves, they are coming for you.

This is designed to do tremendous arm to civil discourse and society. This is designed to encourage the violence and panic Trump claims he is against. This licenses his supporters to do anything, by any means, to keep Trump himself in power. This is openly calling for the civil war the right has been talking about, and thirsting for, for decades

This is the insanity that fuels the grievance on the right, the anger and belief that they’ve been screwed, and it’s the left doing the screwing. For this you have to ignore the decades of the GOP (and the Democrats, yes) shipping jobs overseas, of the ‘trickle down’ promises that never, ever materialized, of culture baiting for votes while shifting power and wealth to the rich. Once you’ve established this to your own satisfaction (not hard to do when you’re inside the bubble, talking only to true believers like yourself) than anything you do to ‘fight back’ is justified. Arm yourself, the ‘libtard’ mob is coming for your home, you women, your country.

This undermining of democracy is not a secret, it’s happening right in front of us, right in the open. Trump has captured most the election machinery, and what he can’t control, he is openly undermining, with the enthusiastic help of the GOP. First, you declare the other side to be illegitimate, you demonize them, making any move against you (like, say, voting) seem as a move against the country, against your followers ‘values’, as something ‘sick’ and unnatural. Then you go about encouraging violence against anyone who disagrees with you (see the support the armed mobs charging statehouses get, the police brutality and the shooting and running over of protesters), then denial of of legitimate votes that don’t go ‘your’ way, stating things like only that the votes counted the night of the election are legitimate, and then you undermine the USPS and vote by mail as ‘fraud’.

Trump is stealing the election and encouraging his followers to fight any vote that doesn’t end with four more years of Trump in the White House. He refuses to say if he’ll accept any result that doesn’t go his way. His minions have called for armed insurrection if they don’t get the result they want.

As David Frum said:

“If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. The will reject democracy.” 

They are warning us right now of what they intend to do.

Take them seriously.