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An Appreciation of Mitch McConnell 
Before you get your hackles up, no … this isn’t a post inducting Mitch McConnell into the Resistance. It’s not a post painting McConnell as part of some institutionalist, non-Trump GOP. It’s none of those things. McConnell is just as awful as you and I always thought and in many ways critically responsible for sustaining Trump through his four years in office. My point is a different one, but I think important. I had writing this post in mind before ex-President Trump’s tirade yesterday. But his tirade for me cast the whole reality in a starker and clarifying relief.
The House GOP especially has had a series of weak, often feckless leaders, with Kevin McCarthy being just the latest, weakest and least fecked. But as I wrote back on the 11th, this isn’t really about bad luck or weak character. It’s built into the structure of the modern GOP. The GOP has weak leaders because weak, figurehead leaders are part and parcel of the GOP being a rightist, revanchist party while masquerading as a center-right party of government. The Jim Jordans and Steve Kings and Louis Gohmerts of the GOP prefer to run their party from the back benches or committee chairs under nominal leaders like McCarthy because it gives them power without accountability, a combination which is the mother’s milk of today’s conservative politics. McCarthy, famously and notoriously, went from privately telling colleagues that he believed Trump was literally on Vladimir Putin’s payroll to becoming one of Trump’s most committed and lickspittleyest toadies.
Where Things Stand: ‘Cancel Culture’ Not The Urgent National Crisis The GOP Wants It To Be, Poll Finds
If you’ve been following Republican talking points closely, you’d assume the concept of “cancel culture” — not the pandemic or the uprising of violent domestic extremists — is the main threat facing the nation today.
Unsurprisingly, men who like to walk around civilian areas with long guns or semi-automatic rifles have a tendency to end up committing mass murder or other terrorist attacks. Back in 2016 we reported that a young man named Conor Climo was marching around a suburban Las Vegas subdivision kitted up in camo and carrying an AR-15. He told reporters he was there to patrol the neighborhood to deter crime. Three years later he was arrested for plotting either a mass shooting or a bomb attack on a Las Vegas area synagogue or gay night club. This is but one example and it’s certainly no surprise that someone who gets excited by terrorizing people – which the heart of open carry performance art – eventually progresses to mass violence.
Census Delays Could Have Big Impact On Redistricting Fights
TPM Reader JG, a law professor, adds this dissent to my comments below …
I think your take on “Dems cave on witnesses” is simply wrong. The managers said they wanted one witness — a one hour deposition of Herrera Beutler. They leaked the fact that no one around Trump or Pence with direct knowledge of Trump’s actions would agree to testify. So with the stipulation that admitted H-B’s statement into the impeachment record, they have an evidentiary basis to argue that Trump fomented insurrection after the fact as well. If they had more witnesses they would have wanted their testimony! I don’t think it has much to do with the threat to call Pelosi, etc. I think the only objection to their strategy is that with more time — a delay to depose H-B, etc., more folks with knowledge would have agreed to come forward. Also not unlikely: McCarthy could come under pressure to dispute H-B (her testimony is hearsay, after all) and could have put in a counter-affidavit disavowing the truth of what she said. So net: the managers’ added to their case. The externals may look messy but it’s up to folks like you to focus on the bottom line.
What Were The Senate Democrats Thinking
Senate Democrats decision to forego witnesses earlier this afternoon came as a jolt, inexplicable and maddening, to many or most Democrats outside the chamber because Democrats appeared to hold all the cards and all the votes and yet capitulated entirely. The final decision was simply to enter Rep. Herrera Beutler’s statement into the record and move on.
Before getting to what this means let me be candid and tell you that through most of this trial and what led up to it I’ve been ambivalent about calling witnesses. In the abstract of course you should call witnesses. But we’re not living in the abstract. The national interest and the Democrats’ partisan interests rests overwhelmingly on rapidly passing a bold COVID relief bill to end the Pandemic and resurrect the economy.
That is not needed simply in the direct sense of getting shots in arms and dollars in hands. Coming out of the moral and civic catastrophe of the last four years it is critical to vindicate the idea that people’s votes, their electoral exertions can and will translate into tangible benefits in their lives. This is a Newtonian cause and effect with which civic life withers and dies or gives way to obscurantism and authoritarian temptation.
To the extent witnesses or an extended trial delayed that to more than a trivial degree, just push through the trial and get on to repairing the country. This is all the more the case since the chances of conviction are as infinitesimally small as the scope of the evidence is vast.
Very surprising, very dramatic events just in the last half hour of the impeachment trial. The Senate has voted to call witnesses, something that seemed all but ruled out just last night. The trial was supposed to end today with a vote to acquit. The shift was triggered by the revelations of Rep. Herrera Beutler (R) of Washington who heard from Rep. Kevin McCarthy of an exchange the day of the insurrection in which President Trump defended the insurrectionists to McCarthy when McCarthy called Trump begging him to call off the mob.
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Where Things Stand: Loyal (Publicly, At Least) Until The Bitter End
Even though the last two days of the impeachment trial have included new information about the fact that former President Trump put his veep in harms way, Vice President Mike Pence is standing by his man.
The Sicknick “Truth Movement” Takes Flight on the Right
At least five people died during the events of January 6th on Capitol Hill. More than 100 Capitol Police officers were injured, at least 15 of whom required hospitalization. Two Capitol Police officers took their own lives in the days immediately following the assault, presumably spurred by trauma and/or guilt over the insurrection. But the death of Officer Brian Sicknick has loomed over the events of the January 6th like no other. While others were bludgeoned or attacked and could have died of their injuries the fact that Sicknick did die added a gravity to the events of January 6th it would not, for better or worse, otherwise have had.
Because of this, a new ‘truth movement’ has begun to crop up on the right suggesting Sicknick’s death was unrelated to the insurrection and may even be part of a cover-up to tarnish the reputation of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. It’s ugly and utterly predictable.