GOP Asshat of the Month.....And Other Thoughts on the January 6th Committee

 Those who've been reading this blog since its 2005 origin will be familiar with a monthly feature from "Mark My Words" early days called "GOP Asshat of the Month".  It was a fun little bit of highly partisan ribbing from the Bush years when discerning political villains was much easier for me.  The legislative coalitions have evolved considerably in the 15 years since my last "GOP Asshat of the Month" was selected in June 2007, and in a way that hasn't been helpful to anybody.  However, this month's January 6th committee hearings have been a sobering reminder that the Republican Party remains the more pernicious force in contemporary partisan politics.  With that in mind, it seems like a good opportunity for a nostalgic revival of the characterization, if only for a single month, as the revelations of the January 6th committee have given me plenty to work with.

Singling out an individual Republican "asshat" from the vast selection of contenders was no easy task, but Pennsylvania Republican Congressman Scott Perry's involvement with last year's post-election hijinks stand out as the most eyebrow-raising.  Former DOJ officials who testified before the committee revealed that Perry pushed hard for Jeffrey Clark, former acting assistant attorney general for the civil division, to meet with top people in the White House, including the president, and gin up bogus internet conspiracy theories.  Specifically, Perry asked former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows "why we can't just work with the Italian government..." to get to the bottom of a delusional speculation that Italian satellites were changing votes from Trump to Biden from outer space.

That's how far Trump's loyalists, even among the ranks of elected officials, were willing to go to toss out voters' verdict of the 2020 Presidential election.  Perry denies it, but it's hard to imagine multiple DOJ officials got together and made this up before giving sworn testimony at a Congressional hearing.  The fact that Perry was one of several Republican Congressmen revealed to have sought preemptive pardons from Trump for his shady subterfuge on behalf of election interference also offers pretty significant circumstantial indication of his guilt.

The revelation about Perry has been one of multiple bombshells unearthed at the January 6th committee hearings, which have thus far lived up to the hype for both political theater and scaring the bejeezus out of those concerned about the state of American democracy based on the events preceding the Capitol insurrection.  Most analysts, myself included, were skeptical that the committee would offer up any information we didn't already know, but all four televised hearings have managed to break some news...and to deliver that breaking news with an effective and devastating degree of focus.

Will it matter?  Unfortunately, probably not a lot.  Americans are so dug in to their tribal positions that even a clearly spelled out account of Trump's attempt to thwart democracy will struggle to break through.  It was telling when witness Rusty Bowers, Speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, eloquently testified about his admirable role in putting the brakes on Trump's efforts to decertify the election in his state back in 2020, but when asked said he'd still vote for Trump over Biden in the next election.  Well okay then....

And Bowers wouldn't be alone.  Recent polling showed that 57% of Americans think Trump should be charged with a crime over his attempts to subvert the election and his role in whooping up the January 6th mob, but another poll released in the same time frame showed Trump leading Biden 44-42 in a hypothetical rematch.  Polling has been unreliable in recent cycles, but its error has always been in undersampling Republican voters, suggesting a real possibility that Trump's standing is even better than what the numbers indicate.  

And even if the numbers are right, the geographical balance of Trump's support matters considerably.  If the breakdown of that 57% who want to see Trump charged with a crime amounts to 77% of voters in California and New York, 37% in Kentucky and Tennessee, and 47% in Iowa and Georgia, then it's a pretty good indication that the electorate's opinions on Trump as it relates to the ultimate allocation of electoral votes haven't moved an inch.

Furthermore, the balkanization of present-day media consumption ensures that those who have had their head in the sand about Trump for seven years have been able to ignore the January 6th committee hearings in a way that would have been far harder for the Watergate hearings 48 years ago.  Indeed, Fox News didn't even carry the opening night of this month's hearings, which were scheduled for primetime and had by far the largest audience.  The following week, Fox did carry the second round of hearings in the daytime, but their commentary reinforced their preexisting script that "not much news was broken here", even though a great deal actually was.  And of course Fox is the highest-rated news network.  There is just no way even the hardest-hitting political news event can break through and change minds in this kind of media environment.

What's most frightening is that, by the skin of our teeth, the institutions held in December 2020 and January 2021 to prevent an authoritarian madman from instigating the most serious constitutional crisis the country had faced since 1861.  It's entirely unclear whether they will hold up next time.  Trump lost quite decisively after all.  It wasn't as if a tiny shift in just one or even two states would have swung the election.  Trump was trying to toss out the election outcome in multiple states, including Michigan which he lost by more than 150,000 votes.  In the three closest states, Democrats had very narrowly prevailed in Secretary of State races in 2018 in two of them (Wisconsin and Arizona), preventing Trump from attaining a legitimate foothold to overthrow their results, and in the closest state of all (Georgia), the Republican Secretary of State held firm in denying Trump's considerable pressure to erase Biden's win.  Considering the way the partisan wind is blowing this year, it's even money at best that Wisconsin and Arizona will install election-denying secretaries of state in 2022, potentially including other light blue states like Pennsylvania, greasing the skids for a repeat performance by Trump in 2024, only with a different outcome.

Beyond that, Mike Pence stood in the way of Trump's attempt to decertify the election on January 6, 2021, but it's a safe bet he wouldn't be Trump's running mate two years from now, replaced by someone more pliable who could be counted upon to defecate on the Constitution to serve Trump's thirst for personal power at any cost.  Furthermore, only two out of more than 200 House Republicans had the courage to serve on the January 6th committee investigating Trump's crimes, and it's a near-certainty that neither of them will be in Congress at this time next year.  Adam Kinzinger is retiring and Liz Cheney is likely to get crushed in a Republican primary in Wyoming later this summer.  In other words, the number of Republicans willing to hold Trump accountable for his crimes is about to drop from 1% of the entire GOP caucus to 0%, a united front of Trump enablers willing to let him get away with absolutely anything.

And for what it's worth, seeing what Trump was able to get away with, coupled with the escalating stakes of control of the White House, who's to say a Democrat wouldn't one day be tempted to try to get away with that Trump did?  And who's to say his current critics wouldn't turn on a dime if the shoe was on the other foot and enable them, deferring to the situational ethics of tribalism to install their preferred candidate with control of White House at stake?

With that said, the person most likely to try this sort of thing again is the guy who has long been assumed to be the GOP frontrunner for 2024...and that's Donald J. Trump.  The one potentially useful thing that may come from the January 6th committee is that I think it is sowing some seeds of doubt in the eyes of mainstream Republican elected officials and the GOP voting base that perhaps Trump is no longer their best candidate for 2024.  In other words, the primary beneficiary of the January 6th committee could very well be Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.  I'm far from being a fan of his, but I don't think he's a mentally unbalanced sociopath the way Trump is.  It's a sad state of affairs that the primary selling point for a GOP Presidential nominee is not being definitively fitted for a straitjacket, but these are the times we live in.

And it's also a sad state of affairs to acknowledge that, at least right now, whoever gets the Republican nomination seems like an early frontrunner to become the next President of the United States.  With the obvious caveat that anything can happen to change the current dynamic between now and November 2024, DeSantis and even Trump both seem as though they'd have a pretty hot hand against the incumbent party.  The prospects of a painful recession on the near-to-medium-term horizon would be kryptonite for an already unpopular Biden, whose age and mental health are additional wild cards as he advances into his 80s heading into a hypothetical re-election bid.  And frankly, I think a ham sandwich with an (R) next to its name could beat Kamala Harris if she was to attempt to succeed a retiring Biden.  Beyond that, who is there on the Democratic side who could galvanize and consolidate support?  It's hard to see.

Could the abortion issue change this dynamic?  I'm skeptical it can by itself drag the Democrats across the finish line in either 2022 or 2024, but it'll probably at least keep some of the wobbliest legs of the Democratic coalition from collapsing as I've already discussed.  I'll take a deeper dive into the abortion issue next month.