Nancy Pelosi’s House January 6 Committee is done. Will anyone miss it?
More accurately, the public phase of the committee is finished, though members (or more likely, their staffs) will allegedly be working on the partisan political body’s “final report”, which is due sometime in late November. A casual observer might wonder, why, if what the nine-person panel of Trump-haters and turncoats discovered was so earth-shattering and ground-breaking (the same thing?) regarding the events of January 6, 2021, would the total summation of their conclusions not be available to voters before the federal midterm elections on November 8?
Have no fear, there will likely be plenty of leaks to the always jealous green-eyed monster that is the establishment media, nourishment for the beast to keep the story alive just long enough to satisfy the smidgen of the American public that’s still paying attention to the matter. After all, this tiny subgroup of disgruntled souls must be sufficiently stimulated and motivated to show up and vote in their respective states. I saw a poll last week indicating that less than ten percent of those surveyed listed January 6 as one of the important drivers of their candidate choice this year, which isn’t much considering the vast amount of time and resources Democrats expended in attempting to tie then-president Donald Trump to the unfortunate events of that day.
Here in southeast Virginia, committee panelist Democrat Rep. Elaine Luria originally ran a series of ads on the January 6 riot to try and rile voters up, but she appears to have pulled them lately. Luria is in a tight race to hold onto her seat (literally) against a much brighter and more qualified Republican, Jen Kiggans, and the local electorate seems primed to send Luria packing along with most of her other swing-district Democrat brethren. I haven’t seen any recent polling on the Luria/Kiggans contest, though the Democrat’s TV ads almost exclusively highlight abortion now, which may enliven her liberal base but leave everyone else who’s worried about the economy and rapidly escalating inflation pondering what she’s really done during her four years in Congress. Like many Democrats, Luria bills herself as a “moderate”, but her voting record and actions reveal otherwise.
Full disclosure: I don’t live in Luria’s congressional district (VA-2) but we still get her ads on local TV. Judging by the volume of Luria-inspired “woke” propaganda, she must be well-funded.
In other words, Luria’s participation in the public sensationalist January 6 witch hunt scrum theoretically should have helped her reelection effort. Perhaps that’s why Nancy Pelosi chose the Virginian for the duty in the first place, though the move appears to have backfired. I’m guessing Luria will join fellow committeemen (committeewomen?) Republicans Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger in the former congressmen’s (congresswomen’s?) unemployment line come early next year. There may be more committee casualties in addition, though I’m not familiar enough with the other members’ particular races to offer a forecast on their individual fates.
I do foresee Democrats Adam Schiff and Jamie Raskin being back next year. Their districts are as solid blue as they come.
So, if the J6 committee has been a bust, which is definitely the truth, who benefitted from it? Could it be Donald Trump himself? In a piece titled “The Jan. 6 Committee Has Helped Make Trump a Historic President”, liberal commentator John F. Harris wrote at Politico Magazine:
“The paradox of the Jan. 6 committee — simultaneously deflating and inflating Trump — is one more expression of the defining phenomenon of the Trump Years: the contempt paradox.
“This paradox is the root of his appeal. He thrills his supporters because he says and does things that outrage establishment sensibilities. Contempt is the natural response to these outrages. But that contempt in turn generates even more contempt — the lifeblood of the Trump movement — from his supporters.
“One suspects even Trump is surprised by just how much energy could be produced by the contempt cycle, and how long it would last. For seven years, since Trump first vaulted into serious presidential contention in 2015, there has been a tension in how his opponents view him: buffoon or tyrant?”
This is not an either/or proposition, Mr. Harris. Liberals and Democrats as well as the Never Trump contingent of disgruntled Republican castoffs, malcontents, memory impaired past rulers, illegal immigration-loving bitter big business types and every former The Weekly Standard writer that I can think of – they ALL see Trump as BOTH a buffoon AND a tyrant. If this weren’t true, why would Trump’s enemies work so long and hard to associate him with Hitler and Mussolini (fascism) while simultaneously depicting the man as a disinterested, egotistical, selfish, greedy, maniacal and incessant Fox News watcher?
Trump’s resume and public career as an entertainer, actor, reality TV star and constant cultural presence certainly dispelled any reasonable person’s impression that he was stupid and incompetent. Even those of us who favored other Republican candidates in the early stages of the 2016 Republican campaign never doubted Trump’s uncanny ability to draw people (both fans and detractors) to himself. There’s never been a politician quite like Trump, and it may be because he’s not really a politician. He’s more like an A-list actor playing a role written for him – and winning an Academy Award every year for his performance.
No wonder liberals still don’t get it. Harris’s writings aren’t so much pro-Democrat as they are anti-Trump. This latest treatment on how the January 6 Committee has turned the former president into an enduring figure in American history is fascinating in its premise but also exposes the liberal establishment’s complete and ongoing inability to understand either Trump or his movement. Or his backers, the Biden labeled “semi-fascist MAGA Republicans” that liberals and Democrats don’t have a clue about.
Hard as it is to believe, Donald Trump didn’t create the feelings behind the MAGA movement. Barack Obama’s – and Joe Biden’s and Hillary Clinton’s, and practically every other Democrat’s -- arrogance, corruption and contempt for the American people and our nation’s Constitution and traditions made Trump what he is. These liberal thought-controllers created the conditions whereby a savvy public opinion consolidator and manipulator like Trump could thrive.
The analogy doesn’t completely fit, but if a biologist can fashion perfect environments to grow bacteria in a petri dish, Democrats poured themselves into getting people sufficiently ticked off to make way for a showy bombastic outsider like Trump to burst on scene and take over.
Question: Would someone like today’s Donald Trump have been able to succeed Ronald Reagan in 1988? I’d argue there’s no chance it could’ve happened. Americans appreciated Ronald Reagan because he made it cool to love their country again. “Morning in America” wasn’t just a myth concocted by Hal Riney and the Reagan campaign team, it was a real phenomenon in everyone’s heart back then.
Donald Trump ascended to the upper echelons of the Republican Party precisely because Democrats and the Republican establishment – actually, all of the Washington DC ruling elites, more appropriately now referred to as the “swamp” – had turned “Morning in America” into a smoldering burned out building full of destroyed hopes and dreams crushed by division, post-Cold War foreign entanglements, Bill Clinton’s lip biting, racial tension (Rodney King and then the OJ Simpson trial and verdict) and followed up with the onset of political correctness and its contemporary iteration – “wokeness”.
It left about half the country wondering where the “old” America had gone and extremely angry that our nation’s “leaders” had let it slip away so quickly. Does anyone remember a time when nearly everyone – including Democrats – believed in enforcing immigration law and that the sanctity of marriage should be protected?
It wasn’t really all that long ago, was it? How about the “unity” we all felt after the 9/11/01 Islamic terrorist attacks? What about economic prosperity and Bill Clinton’s declaration that the “Era of Big Government [was] over”?
These were mile markers on the road to the “contempt paradox” that Harris wrote about in his piece on Trump. The contempt that Trump brought to the surface was for all of the politicians who’d promised and promised and promised for years but then compromised and compromised and compromised their way into allowing Big Government’s tentacles to take over our lives. We’re seeing it now in the gargantuan national debt, the remnants of stupid COVID policy and in elementary school classrooms, where parents are battling the establishment for control over their kids’ lives.
Citizen contempt for and suspicion of those in power is a good thing. It keeps the ruling class on their toes.
As capable as Donald Trump is in steering the media narrative, it wasn’t Trump who created all these issues and problems for him to propose policy solutions to. Donald Trump didn’t break the immigration system. Donald Trump didn’t wreck the economy. Donald Trump didn’t stomp all over religious freedom, traditional values and Second Amendment rights.
The ruling elites from both parties did this, and that’s where the “contempt” came from. Trump’s success was the manifestation of that anger, and the way he was treated in the 2020 Election – and afterwards, including by the inane January 6 Committee – is the reason he endures and will continue to be talked about for decades.
If it seems the Washington establishment doesn’t like “regular” Americans, it’s because they don’t. And if it’s equally true that patriotic American citizens despise the ruling class and their representatives in the highest reaches of government – it’s because they do. Contempt all around!
One wonders whether Nancy Pelosi, if she could do it all over again, would still come up with the tremendously lopsided and wasteful, ultra-partisan January 6 Committee. If the panel’s purpose was to make sure Donald Trump never possessed the popular backing to run for office again, it was a resounding failure. Donald Trump’s legend will indeed live forever, and there’s nothing his enemies can do about it.
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