Memo to Republicans: keep trying to silence Kamala Harris and see where it gets you
It happened again today, just like it did last week: the Senate Intelligence Committee was questioning a key witness in the biggest political scandal in U.S. history. Senator Kamala Harris was in the midst of asking the toughest and most insightful questions of the day. One Republican Senator tried to cut her off in order to lecture her on her approach, and another Republican Senator piled on as if trying to pick a fight, but she kept her cool and persisted. And now Americans are left to ask why.
The optics are bad for the GOP on so many levels, it’s difficult to figure out where to start. There’s no getting around the appearance that these Republican Senators were trying to prevent Kamala Harris from getting to the truth. There was also the appearance the Republicans were trying to derail a rising star from the opposing party. And, perhaps most strikingly, these conservative white men were repeatedly telling the only woman of color on the committee to shut up for no good reason. Whatever their true motivations, it couldn’t have backfired on them any more stunningly.
Kamala Harris didn’t need any help from the opposition in order to end up looking good during these hearings. In fact she got Jeff Sessions to slip up and make a major admission today that his Russia meetings were in fact part of the Trump campaign and not, as he’s long claimed, part of his job as a Senator (link). But on a day with this much controversy and fireworks, and Harris only playing a tangential role, she could easily have been lost in the shuffle by the time the day was over.
Instead, by making a point of singling her out and trying to silence her, the Republicans in the Senate unwittingly made sure that Kamala Harris was one of the lead stories of the day. If this is some kind of GOP strategy to try to taint her so she doesn’t end up becoming President of the United States, it sure backfired. All it did was ensure that Kamala’s strong performance ended up getting the spotlight it deserved. If you’re a regular reader, feel free to support Palmer Report. Follow Palmer Report on Facebook and Twitter.
