Congress under siege
Congress under siege
Two years after the attack on the Capitol, Republicans are still holding Congress hostage
Sometimes it feels hard to believe that the attack on the Capitol happened two years ago. Sure, we sat through hours of hearings conducted by the January 6th committee, which recently published its 845-page heavy conclusive report and issued a criminal referral for Trump to the Department of Justice. Now, we once again have to wait what Merrick Garland deems the best course of action - and, to be honest, I’m quite pessimistic when it comes to the chances of actually seeing Trump indicted, let alone convicted of his crimes.
And yet, the long shadow of that fateful day on January 6th two years ago, makes me shiver even today. Because, sure, the Jan 6 committee did admirable work. And yet, I fear that their strategy will prove to be deeply flawed in the long-term: They focused their entire case on Trump and a few of his closest conspirators. The committees’ case rested almost entirely on the testimony of Republicans - in an effort, I’m sure, to secure themselves against attacks that they were just partisan hacks (those attacks, of course, still came, as they always do), and to make the case against Trump as iron-clad as possible.
Yet by doing that, they managed to paint the Republican party not as what it actually is - a threat to pluralistic, multi-racial democracy, but as a party that was trying to escape the band of lunatics around Trump. They allowed their Republican witnesses to spew Christian nationalism to paint themselves in heroic light, they made their Republican witnesses - who had, in many cases, aided and abetted Trump’s cause for months and years, not to mention the core ideology behind it - as heroes, as defenders of democracy - even though many of them, including the entire party, are still trying to undermine it from within.
In the light of this (maybe in the short-term understandable) failure, contextualized by the threat of the newly elected Republican majority in the House shutting down the committee as soon as possible, it seems eerily fitting that on the same day, two years after the attempted coup, after the attack on Congress, Congress is still under siege. This time not by Oath Keepers, armed men with zip-ties, who are smashing the windows of the capitol, but by the Republican Party itself: For days, the newly elected Congress has failed to elect a speaker - and actually begin its work - because a band of insurrectionists can’t agree on who their leader in the House of Representatives should be.
Again, it’s no surprise that a group of insurrectionists don’t give a shit about democracy. Because with all of the chatter of McCarthy being “not extreme” enough for the most batshit contingent of the GOP, let’s not forget that Kevin McCarthy voted against certifying the results of the 2020 election. The man is an insurrectionist, not a “moderate” option.
McCarthy has lost 13 ballots so far. And while he seems to have turned a number of the Never-Kevin crowd by promising them everything between heaven and hell (which will very likely plunge the House into chaos at the very latest as soon as they have to talk about the debt ceiling or funding the government), it means that he will (if at all) be a Speaker at the mercy of the most extreme of the extremest wing of the Republican Party.
But until (and if) McCarthy should actually be elected Speaker, the sharade the House GOP has been engaging in has not only been humiliating, but also extremely dangerous. Today, Nancy Pelosi said she was glad that two years ago, Democrats had a majority in the House. Who knows what would have happened, had that not been the case? As of now, political commentators are unsure if the House even exists at this moment. Elected House members have not been sworn in yet.
“Can Congress declare war right now? Are we able to do anything?”
, asked Representative Mike Gallagher, Republican of Wisconsin. The answer is terrifying: Likely, no. Until the next Speaker is sworn in, nothing can happen. The House cannot legislate. It literally cannot function until Republicans end this mockery.
And so, two years after Jan 6 2021, Congress is still being held hostage by Republicans. Instead of a physical attacks, what we are witnessing is an attack on the very foundations of functioning government. Because even if McCarthy is elected Speaker, the next two years will be a dumpsterfire of unspeakable proportions - and apart from show-fights about Hunter Biden’s laptop or whatever the MAGA brain worms have cooked up, real catastrophe looms, should government not be funded and the debt ceiling not be raised, plunging the country into chaos and crashing the economy.
If this cannot be resolved next week, committee staff members salaries won’t be able to be paid, members-elect of Congress are in danger of losing their security clearances. All because Kevin McCarthy wants this job more than anything.
John Ganz’ wrote in his latest newsletter:
“So, even though Caesar was assassinated, Caesarism still became the form of rule of Rome. Should we consider that Trump has been vanquished, but Trumpism lingers on, now normalized and institutionalized in the form of everyday parliamentary politics? Looking at these people, I recall the immortal words of Walter Sobchak, played by John Goodman, in The Big Lebowski: “Say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, at least it’s an ethos.” This seems to be politics without any object except attention. They don’t even want anything except to cause problems. It’s not clear what kind of deal could actually be struck with these people.”
I think he hit the nail on the head here. Even with McCarthy (an insurrectionist) as Speaker, the attacks on parliamentary democracy will continue, unrelenting and without any other objective than destruction, attention and humiliation of the political enemy (be it within their own party or on the opposite end of the aisle). It will be a long two years.
P.s. Another piece about the intricacies and details of this Speaker-shitshow will follow soon.