“I think for some on the other side, nothing that gets to the truth will ever be good enough, because they do not want the truth,” said Rules Committee Chairman Jim McGovern today as the House voted to create a Select Committee to investigate the insurrection attempt at the Capitol on January 6 of this year.
It's about as true as a statement can be. While 35 House Republicans had voted for a bipartisan commission last month, which was promptly shot down in the Senate, only two Republicans voted for the Select Committee. They were Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinziger (R-OH). Cheney was removed from the House Republican leadership after speaking out against Republicans who have helped tout "The Big Lie" that the election was stolen from Donald Trump by fraud, while Kinziger has recently made himself a nationally known figure for doing much the same thing.
"Since January 6th, the courage of my party’s leaders has faded. But the threat to our Republic has not," Cheney said. "[Trump's] attacks on our Constitution are accelerating. Our responsibility is to confront these threats, not appease and deflect."
Michael Fanone, a DC police officer who was severely beaten on January 6, watched the vote in the House gallery along with Nancy Pelosi and other police and family members. Last week, Fanone said he asked McCarthy not to put “the wrong people” on the panel. That is, no GOP member who has played down the violence, tried to equate the crowd with tourists, or otherwise attempted to whitewash the day's events.
At this point, however, the partisanship around the issue is so pronounced that some worry that Republicans won't even join the committee as members. More than a dozen Republican House members skipped the vote entirely, joining Donald Trump and Texas politicians at a dog-and-pony show on the Texas border. There, Texas governor Gregg Abbott was burnishing his Trumpist credentials by vowing to continue constructing Trump's border wall. That's why the vote was 220 - 190, a total of 310 instead of 435, the full number of voting members of the House.
The committee will have 13 members, eight of them to be chosen by Nancy Pelosi, and the rest to be chosen in consultation with Kevin McCarthy, House Minority Leader. Pelosi has floated choosing a Republican for one of her picks. That doesn't mean a Republican will accept the seat. While Cheney and Kinziger haven't ruled out serving on the committee, they haven't promised that they will, either.
If the House has to forge ahead with a committee of eleven Democrats and two Republican unicorns, its credibility will be as good as a target for conservative spinmeisters. You might think that someone in the GOP is working in the interests of the United States, but it's entirely possible that there are only two representatives in Congress who are not only Republicans, but patriots as well.
https://wtop.com/congress/2021/06/house-poised-to-launch-new-probe-of-jan-6-insurrection/?fbclid=IwAR2cHGbAaVWPhow1iv9FggPA8IrXu5ofnbk0LRM6ZZsWDKKdzU7mT9ivQJk
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/560984-cheney-kinzinger-back-jan-6-select-committee?fbclid=IwAR0T0XN_ElrNRza-6IBdKqaJrz4vykmRZ6L6HBZf_6AaI7f69IjazgXgcK8
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