Let's put the House and Senate on record:
1. The January 6 insurrection was wrong.
2. We commend for Mike Pence for faithfully doing his duty.
It should be an easy, non-controversial vote, but it won't be.
By the end of the day on January 6, 2021 nearly everyone condemned what had taken place. Both Democrats and Republicans said the violent attack on the Capitol was wrong. Even Trump eventually said it, along with saying he loved the rioters. Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy condemned it sharply. Lindsay Graham said his Trump romance was over. January 6 looked like the breaking point.
Then it wasn't. Lindsay Graham got harassed at an airport and he switched back on Trump. In the days and weeks following the insurrection other Republican officeholders changed their language. Trump wasn't giving up and he still had a huge following. Officeholders heard from them. Republicans and Trump-friendly media proposed alternative understandings of what happened that day. Some said the violence itself was wrong, but false-flag Democrats or Antifa in disguise were doing it. Others claim the worst of the rioters were deep-state FBI provocateurs egging on the crowd. Others say the rioters were mostly tourists invited into the Capitol doing no harm, good people, with a few bad apples. Others posited the rioters were there with good intention--they were patriots--saving democracy with a little justified violence, like the Boston Tea Party.
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Donald Trump telephoned the family of Ashly Babbitt--the woman shot and killed by a Capitol police officer while she tried to climb through a broken window to enter the Senate chamber. He called her a hero. That got media attention. There was no media attention paid to GOP officeholders denouncing Trump for this, because there were none. Too many GOP voters think the attack on the Capitol was justified. Best say nothing.
The anniversary of January 6 is an opportunity for America. It is an opportunity for Democrats to declare the insurrection wrong and Mike Pence a hero. The reflexive response of Republicans will be to oppose the resolutions. Republicans will call them partisan gamesmanship. That is true. The resolutions create a hard, divisive vote for Republicans and Democrats know that and love it.
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| "I know I did the right thing." |
Congressional Democrats can propose two simple resolutions, to be voted on in each chamber. Short is best. There should be no fine points to quibble over.
Joint Resolution One might read:
The Congress condemns the shameful and violent attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 by people calling for Congress to stop certification of the 2020 presidential election.
Joint Resolution Two might read:
The Congress recognizes and commends Vice President Michael Pence for his role in faithfully carrying out the duties of his office on January 6, 2021 under difficult circumstances.
These resolutions are as bare and simple as a light switch, yes or no. Was the Capitol insurrection right or wrong? Was Pence right or wrong?
If Republicans in Congress cannot vote yes for these, it is important that Americans know this. A no vote means one openly supports an insurrection against the government and that one refuses to support a Republican doing his constitutional duty. Mumbling doesn't work here. Yes or no.
12 comments:
Trump called the family of rioter Ashley Babbitt and called her a hero, but never called the family of officer Brian Sicknick, who died the day after defending our Capitol from the likes of Ashley Babbitt. Even after inciting the riot, Trump remains the undisputed leader of the Republican Party. So much for their alleged support of the police. That’s why Republicans try to whitewash the event and derail efforts to investigate it.
The party used to at least make a pretense of being patriotic. Now it’s become a cult like Jim Jones’ but instead of just killing themselves, they’re trying to kill our democracy. Hopefully the House panel will keep their findings front and center at the peak of campaign season.
Seems really straightforward. Makes one wonder why it hasn't happened already. Maybe because it is straightforward.
For one thing, I would doubt if Pence was in Congress he would vote for it. Republicans prefer confusion, obfuscation, and distraction; it serves them well when bamboozling their fuzzy headed followers. Manchin probably wouldn't either, while insisting it would encourage welfare fraud.
So, to answer my own question: I think Democrats will become much more strident as the midterms draw closer. Timing such a resolution is critical to its impact, and with the promise of public Watergate style hearings I would imagine that we'll see something like this following them, right before the primaries.
Setting aside for now the rather important legalities of "insurrection", "coup", and "attempts" thereof, which have already been litigated here and elsewhere, there is no rational basis in my view to object to Mr. Sage's proposed resolutions. If it's helpful to the nation to formally acknowledge them, so be it.
They will remain partisan, nonetheless, if not exactly in the way Mr. Sage suggests. I do agree with him that it's valuable and hardly unreasonable to make Republicans in Congress fish or cut bait where Trump's increasingly shrill and wholly self-serving sensibilities are concerned, and well before the 2022 midterms at that.
1/6 is partisan re Democrats too, but in my view because Democrats are NOT entitled to the moral high ground. Despite their fervent need it will not help them politically. Why? The left-friendly media also posited alternative (to fact) versions of what happened that day; and today's Left hardly stands for American dignity.
Even aside from the unconvincing change of heart from "ACAB" Democrats, especially in news and social media, on the subject of police and the killing of unarmed rioters, much of the initial sturm und drang was driven by the whole-cloth media lie that a Capitol officer was bludgeoned to death. Ofc. Sicknick even lay in state! His death was ruled from natural causes, with zero bodily trauma. The media also proclaimed the mob was armed. There were zero (mob) firearms in the capitol. Another officer in Congressional testimony claimed he and others were abused with the n-word. Not one jot of the voluninous audio/video evidence has corroborated that.
Most importantly, Democrats grievously miscalculate their emphasis on 1/6 going forward because it's false-faced. (Many old-school Sage blog Democrats and the like excepted). Americans know the modern Left stands for our traditions and institutions only in the breach (literally, here!), not in the observance. Their 1/6 moral outrage flies in the face of their denouncing their own nation as evil from its inception, while burning and looting cities in near-endless Bad America protests, attacking police and government buildings, and ripping down statues of Lincoln and Jefferson. 1/6 WAS a national travesty. Social Justice Left outrage is pretextual.
Low Dungeon:
The contortions you went through trying to make Democrats seem somehow comparably complicit in trying to dismantle our democracy as the Insurrection Party, you must feel like a pretzel. For purposes of brevity, let’s take just one bit of the misinformation you parrot: A review of the federal charges against the rioters shows that they did come armed, and with a variety of weapons: stun guns, pepper spray, baseball bats and flagpoles wielded as clubs.
There is no doubt that in spite of whitewashing attempts by today’s sorry excuse for conservatives, history will view Jan. 6 as a seminal event – an attack against the very foundation of our republic…that is, unless Trumplicans succeed in their ongoing efforts. After all, history is written by the victors.
Ask the cops. Protect and serve, who among the Fox commentators were in the armed forces and called to serve their country? The cops paid the price for trump's grandstanding. Sicknick was sprayed by a chemical, much footage of him stumbling around washing his eyes and in stress. What was the chemical? He died, end of story, shame on his weakness. Spit on his grave and his family. The Republican way.
I stopped reading once the commenter blamed "left-leaning media" which exists only in the feeble minds of conservatives.
All Americans have paid the price for trumps's grandstanding and lying.
Much of the planet has, too.
Ralph--
The reaction to pepper spray cause of death theory was floated as a fallback by the same folks who'd lied for weeks about the blunt force trauma fire extinguisher theory. After an unexplained 3 months-plus delay, the medical examiner's report cited no contributory external trauma from blunt force OR from chemical irritant. He died of arterial thrombosis, listed officially as "natural causes". No one has even been charged with assaulting Sicknick, let alone contributing to his demise. The NYT managed a corrective snippet on page A23, to "match" weeks of primacy-and-recency propaganda.
Mc--
Agreed, prophylactic rejection of content based on your own political preferences is both wise and factually authoritative. I now acknowledge per your correction that those news and social media sources which lied about Officer Sicknick and the other 1/6 matters I specified must therefore have been center or right-leaning. Same with Nancy Pelosi, AOC and other "Democratic" politicians who repeated the media lies.
Low Dungeon -
Officer Sicknick's significant other was interviewed on PBS the other night. I wish you could have heard her version. It was far more knowledgeable and articulate then yours, but probably still wouldn't penetrate your apathy. He and his fellow officers were attacked by an armed mob of thousands trying to get at Pence and our legislatures. You'd have to be an idiot to think that didn't contribute to his death, or not to care.
It's not a conspiracy when an autopsy is delayed.
Seldom does performing a quick autopsy save lives.
Even in a criminal case, such as the domestic terrorists attacking the US Capitol, there is no need to have a quick autopsy.
People thinking it's a conspiracy also think it's a conspiracy because JFK's autopsy was rushed.
If you get your news from social media then you're misinformed, at best.
Mc--
1. Combination of straw-man and nonresponsive: rejecting claims I never made, and bypassing claims I did make. The autopsy was not delayed. The report with its inconvenient truths was.
2. Agreed--a great number of youngish Democrats should indeed know better. But in the case of the initial Sicnick lies, along with other exaggerations about 1/6, it was the NYT, WaPo, CNN, etc.
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