McConnell Chooses Party Over Country in Blocking 1/6 Commission - Rob Horowitz

McConnell Chooses Party Over Country in Blocking 1/6 Commission - Rob Horowitz

Concerned that the establishment of a 1/6 Commission would put Donald Trump’s incitement of an insurrection front and center in the 2022 mid-term elections, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell(R-KY) used all his powers of persuasion and leverage to successfully block its passage.  He convinced all but 7 Republican Senators to oppose an up or down vote on the legislation last week—leaving the measure 3 votes short of the 60 votes required to overcome a filibuster. (The actual vote was 54 to 35 because 3 supporters of the 1/6 Commission were not present, two Democratic Senators and Pat Toomey(R-PA). If the votes were there to overcome a filibuster, Senator Schumer would have scheduled it at a time when all the supporters were in attendance.)

McConnell disingenuously continues to call the proposed commission partisan, even though he knows full well that the version that passed the House was modeled after the bipartisan 9/11 Commission,  designated an equal number of Democratic and Republican members, and was negotiated and agreed to by Representative John Katko (R-NY), the ranking member on the House Homeland Security Committee, and Kevin McCarthy’s designated lead negotiator on the legislation. In fairness to the senator, he was at least not hiding his real reason for opposing the establishment of the commission.  “They'd like to continue to litigate the former president into the future," said the Senate Minority Leader. “We think the American people, going forward and in the fall of '22, ought to focus on what this administration is doing to the country and what the clear choices that we have made to oppose most of these initiatives."

McConnell’s craven political decision is especially disappointing because he knows the stakes for our democracy.  The Kentucky Senator and institutionalist says he hasn’t changed his mind about the former president’s responsibility for the unprecedented attack on the Capitol with the explicit intention of stopping a vote to ratify the results of a presidential election. While he voted to acquit the president on narrow jurisdictional grounds at the end of the impeachment trial that followed the events of January 6, McConnell excoriated him on the floor of the US Senate. “The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president," said the Senate Republican Leader. “And their having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories, and reckless hyperbole which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth.  Former President Trump's actions preceding the riot were a disgraceful dereliction of duty.”

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One of the 7 Republican Senators to support the establishment of the commission, Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) pointedly criticized the minority leader for putting party over country. “To be making a decision for the short-term political gain at the expense of understanding and acknowledging what was in front of us on January 6, I think we need to look at that critically,"  Senator Murkowski said. "Are we going to acknowledge that as a country that is based on these principles of democracy that we hold so dear and one of those is that we have free and fair elections and we respect the results of those elections and we allow for a peaceful transition of power — I kind of want that to work beyond just one election cycle.”

McConnell’s opposition to the commission would be more defensible, if he would speak out more regularly on the persistent attempts by the former president and his allies to downplay January 6, blame it on Antifa and other unnamed left-wing protestors trying to make Trump look bad, and continue to claim without evidence that the election was stolen. The former president’s disgraceful disinformation efforts have persuaded a majority of Republicans that Joe Biden is not the real winner of the 2020 elections and that January 6 was not the work of Trump supporters.  Fortunately, an overwhelming majority of American voters overall see through this patent and dangerous nonsense.

McConnell is making the political bet that Mr. Trump will fade into political insignificance and as a result not become a major factor in the 2022 elections. He knows that the more front and center Trump is, the better it is for Democrats.  The problem that the minority leader faces, however, is that the former president clearly has no intention of fading away.

The events of January 6 are not going to be allowed to fade away either.  There will almost definitely be both or either a select committee appointed by Democratic Congressional Leaders and a commission appointed by President Biden, which you can bet will include prominent and respected Republicans, to take a broad look at the events leading up to January 6, the day itself, and to make recommendations to prevent a reoccurrence.   Neither of these options will have the stature or credibility of a bi-partisan commission established by Congress, but Congressional Republicans will also have much less ability to influence how these investigations are conducted or the results.

It just may turn out that McConnell’s decision to put party over country was not only substantively wrong; it wasn’t very good politics.  That is the outcome the Kentucky Senator deserves.

 

Rob Horowitz is a strategic and communications consultant who provides general consulting, public relations, direct mail services and polling for national and state issue organizations, various non-profits, businesses, and elected officials and candidates. He is an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island.