Commentary: Republicans Don’t Get It

by Julie Kelly

 

When Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) looks around his adopted hometown of Washington, D.C.—a city shamelessly and aggressively using every lever of federal power to destroy Donald Trump and the 76 million Americans who dared to vote for him in 2020—he sees only one menace to the well-being of the nation:

January 6 protesters.

“I do think it’s an important issue,” McConnell said in response to a reporter’s question about a recent poll that ranked “threats to democracy” as the top concern among registered voters who responded. “There were those who were trying to prevent the orderly transfer of power for the first time in American history and that was not good.”

But contrary to his somber reflections, January 6 was very good for McConnell; he got exactly what he wanted after the tear gas smoke cleared that evening. As I explained here, not only did McConnell intentionally leave the Capitol largely unguarded, he warned of the irreparable damage to the republic if his Senate Republican colleagues demanded an audit of contested states—the “official proceeding” actually taking place when the building was breached. McConnell later cooed to a reporter that he had prevailed that day.

“Exhilarating” is how McConnell described his emotions after congressional Republicans, cowed by the four-hour disturbance, abandoned their plans to seek a 2020 election audit commission.

In a way, McConnell is right that the events of January 6 represent a grave threat to the country. They do—just not in the way he thinks.

The Capitol protest is being used as the pretext to criminalize political dissent as the FBI continues its dragnet to round up 850-and-counting Trump supporters (with new arrests announced just this week) and the Justice Department circles Donald Trump as the alleged instigator of the “insurrection.”

Political prisoners languish in a special jail for January 6 defendants, a hellscape located in the shadow of McConnell’s throne on Capitol Hill. Attorney General Merrick Garland’s prosecutors ruthlessly seek years in prison for nonviolent offenders, adding domestic terror sentencing enhancements in an escalation of the regime’s war on terror against the Right.

The January 6 select committee has made a mockery of itself while failing to sway public opinion. The same poll that showed a majority of Americans feared “threats to democracy” above all other issues also showed they have little or no faith that the government is conducting a fair inquiry. Yet this phony January 6 investigation provides cover for all sorts of lawfare, not least of which is the production of tens of thousands of Trump’s presidential records from his last year in office, a process expedited by the unprecedented denial of executive privilege claims by Joe Biden.

But McConnell, his Senate GOP toadies, and most Republican House members are intentionally oblivious to the radical weaponization of the Justice Department.

Following a brief outburst after the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago, congressional Republicans have gone back to radio silence. Promises of a “rapid response team” to counter the January 6 committee’s primetime performances landed no punches as Republicans shied away from much-needed fights over several questions the committee left unanswered, including the lack of progress in the hunt for the mysterious pipe bomber and unreleased surveillance footage. Instead, they pivoted quickly to familiar ground: high food and energy prices.

Fear and impotence paralyze Republican Party leaders as well as those aspiring to hold leadership positions in a potential Republican majority. If the party doesn’t blow it, that is.

Unfortunately, it appears as though the GOP is doing precisely that. Republican voters, disgusted with the party’s wholesale failure to confront the Democrats’ scorched earth crusade with little more than tough-sounding tweets, eventually will channel Hillary Clinton and begin asking “what difference” their anger and votes even make.

What difference, at this point, does it make if Republicans win Congress in November?

As Victor Davis Hanson observed this week:

the left-wing playbook is based on two pillars: the FBI raid on Donald Trump’s home, the January 6 ‘insurrection’ investigation—and selective daily leaking about both. Between the raid and the star-chamber House inquiry, we are supposed to forget unaffordable gas and food, dangerous U.S. cities, over 3 million people swarming the border, and the Afghanistan debacle. Yet if the Republicans advance a coherent national plan of action to restore a pre-Biden America, if Donald Trump will focus positively on national issues and not take the bait to obsess on the wrongs done to him, and if grass-roots conservatives this time around prepare to preempt massive left-wing vote harvesting, they will achieve their blowout.

“But that is a lot of ifs,” Hanson writes. “And meanwhile, time grows short.”

Seventy-five days to be exact.

So, what’s the plan? Who in the GOP is detailing how Congress will dismantle this abusive administrative state targeting their own voters? Where is the pledge to cut off funding to the FBI and U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, a Biden campaign advisor now handling the vengeful prosecution of Trump voters?

Where are the public denouncements of Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, a longtime Obama loyalist now attempting to finish what her boss started in 2016 by putting Trump in handcuffs, or of Steven D’Antuono, the FBI chief responsible for the Gretchen Whitmer fednapping hoax, who sent his agents to Palm Beach to participate in the raid of the former president’s residence?

Republicans may not control much in Washington yet, but there are other ways to draw attention to this destructive abuse of power. The Biden regime and congressional Democrats are plowing new and dangerous ground, and Republicans appear unwilling to do anything about it.

Republican voters hear their silence. And in November, they might hear Republicans’ silence in return.

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Julie Kelly is a political commentator and senior contributor to American Greatness. She is the author of January 6: How Democrats Used the Capitol Protest to Launch a War on Terror Against the Political Right and Disloyal Opposition: How the NeverTrump Right Tried―And Failed―To Take Down the President. Her past work can be found at The Federalist and National Review. She also has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, The Hill, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, and Genetic Literacy Project. She is the co-host of the “Happy Hour Podcast with Julie and Liz.” She is a graduate of Eastern Illinois University and lives in suburban Chicago with her husband and two daughters.
Photo “Mitch McConnell” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0.

 

 

 

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