The Other McCain

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The J6 Committee Tantrum

Posted on | October 15, 2022 | 1 Comment

This week marked the beginning of the end of “The United States House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, more commonly known as the January 6th Committee.”

Congress has now adjourned until after the election, which Democrats will lose, and so, while we might see some further theatrics during the lame-duck sessions before the 118th Congress convenes in January, this was their big finale: “Let’s subpoena Trump!”

It so happened that I decided to switch my home-office TV to MSNBC on Friday (I watch MSNBC so you don’t have to), and on Morning Joe, they featured this interview with Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland):

 

“… the terrible violence … scrambling to get more police and military reinforcements on the scene … the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers and insurrectionists … the attempted political coup and violent insurrection … the mobilizing of a domestic violent extremist movement …”

Listening to that, I was struck by how easily these hyperbolic phrases tumbled out of Raskin’s mouth, as evidence of how insulated inside the echo chamber Democrats have become and, of course, the “journalist” Willie Geist is part of that echo chamber. He is as objective about the J6 Committee as my teenage daughter is objective about Harry Styles.

The predicate of the J6 “investigation,” the fundamental tenet of the belief system in which the Capitol riot was an “attempted political coup,” is that there is no reason to believe that the 2020 election was fraudulent. If no reasonable person could suspect that the election was stolen, then what happened on J6 was an illegal “insurrection,” an attempt to overthrow the legitimate government. Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) are unwilling to hear the arguments made or to examine the evidence cited by those who claim that Biden was not legitimately elected. The bedrock assumption of Democrats is that Biden was elected in a landslide — 81 million votes! the most popular presidential candidate in history! — and thus they view any expression of doubt about Biden’s legitimacy as “insurrectionist” crazy-talk.

This is not how discourse in a democratic society is supposed to operate. Controversies over public policy would never occur, if we all shared the same set of beliefs, and so the fact that there is controversy about any subject (in this case, the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election) requires a public hearing of arguments on both sides of the dispute, so that the electorate may be fully informed. The J6 Committee deliberately avoided such a discussion. Indeed, the whole purpose of this committee (which, by the way, lacks legitimacy under the normal rules of House procedure) was to criminalize doubt about the 2020 election.

It is one thing, when partisans on either side of dispute are seeking to rally their supporters, to make a one-sided argument in favor of a particular policy. This is entirely normal in politics. Yet the proceedings of a congressional committee are not supposed to be partisan rallies. Pelosi’s charade of phony “bipartisanship” — handpicking Trump-haters Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger as “Republican” members of the select committee, over the objections of Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy — cannot disguise the one-sided nature of the J6 Committee’s business. At no time in the operations of this committee has there been any fair consideration of the views of 74 million Americans who voted to reelect President Trump, 77% of whom think cheating affected the 2020 election.

Now, it may be that, after hearing everything that election skeptics had to say on this subject, most Americans would still conclude that Biden was legitimately elected, and therefore would believe that the protest of the January 6 certification of Biden’s election — which is what the rally at the Capitol was supposed to be, a peaceful protest — was inspired by erroneous (but sincere) beliefs. There is a world of difference between a protest motivated by a sincere sense of grievance and an “attempted political coup,” and yet at no time did the J6 Committee ever allow any consideration of the election doubts that inspired the events of J6.

Furthermore, and this is equally crucial, Democrats and the media absolutely refuse to recognize that the outbreak of violence at the Capitol in January 2021 was clearly inspired by the months of “Black Lives Matter” riots that broke out in May 2020 — riots that the Democrats enthusiastically applauded. Many millions of dollars of damage were inflicted, and many people killed or injured, during the weeks of arson, vandalism and looting which CNN reporter Omar Jimenez infamously described as “fiery but most peaceful” protests.

By applauding this destruction, Democrats thereby legitimized violent “protests,” and if the Capitol rioters believed there would be no repercussions for their actions on January 6 — well, why shouldn’t they believe that? Antifa thugs and mobs of urban looters had gotten away with criminal activity which everybody saw happening live on television throughout the summer of 2020, and Democrats never objected to those “mostly peaceful” protests. Yet here was Jamie Raskin on MSNBC Friday morning, speaking of Republican voters as “a domestic violent extremist movement,” and Willie Geist did not object to this partisan smear.

Well, this will all be fading in our rearview mirror soon enough. Anyone who looks at the poll numbers can see that Democrats are going to get wiped out in the midterms, and the proceedings of the J6 Committee will be remembered as symptomatic of Orange Man Bad Syndrome.

All we have to do is Keep Calm and Vote Republican.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!




 

Category: Congress, Democrats

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One Response to “The J6 Committee Tantrum”

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