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“Top U.S. Senate Republican Mitch McConnell on Tuesday criticized his party's censure of two prominent Republican critics of Donald Trump… Last week, the Republican National Committee censured Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, the only two Republicans serving on the House of Representatives select committee investigating the events of Jan. 6, 2021… ‘The issue is whether or not the RNC should be sort of singling out members of our party who may have different views from the majority. That's not the job of the RNC,’ McConnell told a news conference.” Reuters
Here’s our recent coverage of the Jan. 6 commission. The Flip Side
The right is divided about the censure, and urges Republicans to focus on the future.
“This kind of ritual purification is bad politics. Republicans should be talking about President Biden’s $5 trillion spending plan, 7% inflation, and the Americans who are still trying to flee Afghanistan. Now the media is crowing because the RNC says Ms. Cheney and Mr. Kinzinger’s role in investigating Jan. 6 amounts to ‘persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.’…
“Republicans don’t have to agree with everything—or anything—that the House Jan. 6 committee is doing, and we think it was a mistake for Speaker Nancy Pelosi to reject the appointees offered by GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy. But Republicans should not get within 10 miles of defending the Capitol riot. What is to be gained by the RNC’s indulgence of President Trump’s vendettas?”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
Others argue, “The Jan. 6 Select Committee is investigating an event that has already been investigated by federal law enforcement. The FBI – which seized banking, phone, social media, and geolocation records from the more than 700 people they arrested and charged – found no evidence of any central coordination or organization. Moreover, investigations demanded by Democratic House members into Republican House members, conducted by both the inspector general of the Capitol Police and the Government Accountability Office, have turned up nothing…
“Despite this, the Select Committee insists there was some sort of central planning. In an attempt to harass as many people as possible to prove law enforcement wrong, they have issued huge dragnets for the personal emails, text messages, location records, and social media posts of a secret list of people that includes private American citizens who had nothing to do with entering the Capitol…
“They have likewise breached centuries of protocol by demanding the private phone records and testimony of their own House colleagues… Cheney and Kinzinger have been willing participants in every part of this exercise.”
Rachel Bovard, The Federalist
“Yes, there was reason for the Republican Party to be annoyed by Cheney and Kinzinger. But Cheney and Kinzinger appear to be obsessed with the events of November 2020 through January 2021. The Republican Party, and the voters, do not share that obsession. By taking time to debate Cheney's and Kinzinger's actions, and then by voting to censure them, the RNC got sucked into the Democratic-Trump effort to focus on 2020. The RNC's goal is to win Republican control of Congress in 2022 and the White House in 2024. That requires a relentless focus on 2022 and 2024…
“[Voters] are deeply concerned about inflation, about crime, about border security, about what their children are taught in school, about spending, about national security — in short, about opposing everything President Joe Biden and his Democratic allies are doing. They are not as intensely interested in relitigating the 2020 election… Republicans have to avoid the traps being set by Pelosi and the Democrats.”
Byron York, Washington Examiner
The left condemns the censure and the Republican party in general.
The left condemns the censure and the Republican party in general.
“The RNC resolution condemned [Cheney and Kinzinger] for participating in a ‘Democrat-led persecution’ of ordinary citizens engaged in ‘legitimate political discourse’… The RNC's declaration coincided with the release of new video by the Department of Justice showing the horrific truth of the insurrection -- a Trump mob, high on his election lies, beating up police officers and vowing to drag lawmakers through the streets…
“After the passage of the measure, RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel insisted to CNN that the committee drew a distinction between those who did not commit violence on January 6 and rioters who stormed the US Capitol. But the resolution, watered down from a previous version that demanded the stripping of party backing from Cheney and Kinzinger, contained no such caveat.”
Stephen Collinson, CNN
“Trump regularly sanctioned violence, whether encouraging his fans to pummel protesters or police officers to rough up suspects (‘When you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, you just see them thrown in, rough, I said, please don't be too nice.’). These statements were often shrugged off as Trumpian excesses, but they were part of a broader blurring of political discourse and political violence… The RNC's appeal to ’legitimate political discourse’ is an effort to engage in the same water-muddying exercise…
“The end result of these efforts to minimize, excuse, and erase right-wing violence is an environment that invites even more of it. Because if a mob can ransack the Capitol while hunting for members of Congress in an effort to overthrow an election… only to emerge as something between political protesters and persecuted heroes, then why would they swear off violence in the future?”
Nicole Hemmer, CNN
“The censure is wishy-washy not only in its wording but in its aim as well. It scolds Cheney and Kinzinger, but it doesn’t go any further… The RNC could have called for Cheney and Kinzinger to be expelled from the House Republican Caucus, but it didn’t do that, because the point is to satisfy Trump—a man who’s always been more concerned with appearances than actions…
“The censure appears to have been written so that everyone could read into it what they wanted… Even if it stops short of declaring the violence ‘legitimate political discourse,’ the resolution is nevertheless an attack on basic democratic principles. It is part of a push to legitimize the ‘paperwork coup,’”
David A. Graham, The Atlantic
“What doesn’t seem to bother the self-proclaimed ‘party of the Constitution’ is the mounting evidence of how far Trump was willing to go to subvert the clear will of the American people as they expressed it at the ballot box in November 2020. How he entertained a proposal to have the Department of Homeland Security seize voting machines in swing states that he lost. How he continues to foment the lie that the election was tainted by massive voter fraud. How he claims that then-Vice President Mike Pence could and should have rejected the electoral college vote tally.”
Karen Tumulty, Washington Post
