Mitch McConnell just gave away the game
There will be a congressional investigation into the Capitol attack, and there is literally nothing the Republicans can do to stop it. If Senate Republicans use the filibuster to kill the bipartisan 1/6 commission, then Speaker Pelosi will merely appoint a select 1/6 committee with all the same powers and high profile, and with less Republican influence. This will allow the Democrats to run a cleaner investigation, while pelting the Republicans for having refused to properly get on board with it.
It seems a number of Republican Senators are belatedly figuring out how bad it’s going to look for them when they have to run for reelection, if they vote against the bipartisan 1/6 commission. To that end, a handful of them are now publicly vowing to vote for the commission, and a lot more of them are privately considering it. It turns out Mitch McConnell is frantically trying to stop them from doing so.
This reveals something interesting. McConnell is corrupt and evil, but he’s quite politically savvy. He understands the ugly fallout Senate Republicans will face if they strike down the bipartisan 1/6 commission. But he apparently very much fears there will be even more ugly fallout for Senate Republicans if the bipartisan commission happens.
This is remarkable, given that a congressional investigation into the Capitol attack is absolutely 100% going to happen, no matter how this vote goes. Mitch McConnell knows he has no hope of preventing an investigation; he’s just trying to make sure it’s a select committee instead of a bipartisan commission.
McConnell must believe that the only way he can get a leg up in 2022 is to dishonestly argue that the 1/6 select committee is a partisan farce. Otherwise he wouldn’t be spending so much of his remaining political capital begging Republican Senators to make themselves look bad by voting down the 1/6 bipartisan commission.
This will be hugely ugly for the Republicans either way. There will be no winning for them when it comes to the Capitol attack investigation; all the Republicans will be able to do is try to minimize the damage to them. But McConnell is giving away the dishonest strategy that he intends to use to try to minimize the damage heading into 2022. Given that McConnell’s strategies in 2020 resulted in his party losing the Senate, he’s far from infallible, and there’s a good chance he’s totally blowing this for his own party. We’ll see.
