If the vote on establishing a bipartisan commission to investigate the July 6 insurrection was the Republican Party’s moment of truth, then the Trump-dominated party nixed the idea and embraced pepertuation of The Big Lie that Joe Biden didn’t really win the 2020 Presidential election.
So what do the Democrats do now? CNN’s Senior Political Analyst and anchor John Avlon looks at the choices — and what is at stake.
To begin with, Democrats should have demanded that the filibuster be conducted out loud, on the floor of the Senate. This idea, first floated by writer Jonathan Alter, would have forced Republicans to defend the indefensible.
The O.G. talking filibuster is a pain. It’s public — and drags on for hours or days. But it’s consistent with the idea that filibusters are supposed to be stands of conscience — not secret rubber stamps for partisan obstruction.
Republicans want to stop talking about the attack on our Capitol, so they should have been made to talk about it for a long time — attempting to diminish the importance of the attacks, as the Capitol police, and the country, look on.
The fact that it would have delayed their Memorial Day break would have been entirely appropriate. Instead, they were allowed to double down on their endorsement of insurrection amnesia. It’s just one more reason why the time has come for filibuster reform.
His Plan B, which he calls ” a House Select Committee — with a twist.”
Democrats could unilaterally convene a committee, asking Republican John Katko of New York, who negotiated the deal, to serve as co-chair.
Remember, 35 courageous Republicans voted to support a bipartisan commission, but House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is already planning to attack the House committee as partisan, using that as an excuse to dismiss its findings. So McCarthy is likely to appoint Big Lie backers who will do his bidding, but that also runs the risk of making Republicans look bad in the ensuing circus.
This committee would have subpoena power to get testimony from witnesses ranging from McCarthy himself to former President Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and even former Vice President Mike Pence. They would no doubt resist those subpoenas in court, but the longer that delay tactic drags on, the closer it could bring them to the next election — something they desperately want to avoid.
And he final option, laid out by Congressional scholar Norm Orstein:
The attorney general could appoint a special counsel to investigate the insurrection and sedition, given that President Joe Biden was a party in the election.
The special counsel could deputize Justice Department lawyers from the public integrity division with subpoena powers to look at the digital records surrounding the attack.
He or she would then convene a bipartisan citizens commission — led by respected officials like Leon Panetta and Robert Gates, Jeh Johnson and Fran Townsend — to hold public hearings, resulting in an authoritative official report and recommendations. This would in effect reverse engineer the bipartisan commission that Republicans rejected.
His conclusion:
These hardball alternatives would require Democrats to push back strongly, but they are necessary now that the GOP has killed the commission. Attempts to diminish democracy’s norms demand tough action.
What’s clear is that if we cannot unite and reason together after an attack on our democracy, then it will only embolden future insurrection attempts — and that is unacceptable. We must defend our democracy by any lawful means necessary.
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Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.