On Saturday, all the Bluegrass Republican bigwigs got together in Smithfield, Kentucky to have a big rally for Senator Rand Paul’s reelection bid. Sen. Paul promised, if given a third six-year term, to get to the bottom of the origins of the COVID-19 virus Soon-to-be (probably) Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promised that Paul will become the chairman of the Senate Health (HELP) Committee next year and thereby be in a perfect position to conduct his inquiries.
At the Kentucky GOP rally for Paul, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, the state’s senior senator, also pointed to Paul’s opportunity to lead a committee if the GOP wins Senate control.
If that occurs, he said, Paul would become chairman of “one of the most important committees in the Senate — in charge of health, education, labor and pensions.”
McConnell was upbeat about Republican prospects in November.
“I’ve never seen a better environment for us than this year,” said McConnell, who is in line to again become majority leader if the GOP reclaims the Senate.
The article cited above is from the Associated Press. McConnell’s optimism is buttressed by the latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll which shows for the “first time in eight years…Marist’s survey has found Republicans with an advantage on the congressional ballot test.” As things stand, the Democrats are on course to get slaughtered in the midterm elections.
The AP is also running this story right now.
…a batch of startling evidence…shows the deep involvement of some House Republicans in Trump’s desperate attempt to stay in power. A review of the evidence finds new details about how, long before the attack on the Capitol unfolded, several GOP lawmakers were participating directly in Trump’s campaign to reverse the results of a free and fair election…
…The Republicans plotting with Trump and the rioters who attacked the Capitol were aligned in their goals, if not the mob’s violent tactics, creating a convergence that nearly upended the nation’s peaceful transfer of power.
“It appears that a significant number of House members and a few senators had more than just a passing role in what went on,” Rep. Bennie Thompson, the Democratic chairman of the Jan. 6 committee, told The Associated Press last week.
There’s some modestly good news in the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll which finds that President Biden’s approval numbers have improved a bit over the last two months, but not enough to project success for his party at the ballot box.
What we’re dealing with is an electorate that is not responding to evidence that the Republican Party tried to overturn a presidential election and install a dictator by force.
Maybe that will change when the January 6 committee holds its public hearings beginning in June and lays out its evidence but the current situation is absolutely appalling and terrifying.
I think it’s likely that the electorate is not responding to evidence of the Jan. 6 insurrection because the electorate largely doesn’t have that evidence.
You have to be someone who not only follows the news closely, but follows journalists like Marcy Wheeler to have an understanding of how much progress DOJ is making on its methodical prosecution of hundreds of cases and of several overlapping conspiracies that have led it to investigating several close associates of Donald Trump.
At the rate they’re going, there’s a decent chance that sometime in 2023 or 2024 they’ll have enough evidence to indict Trump…at which point he’ll use every delaying tactic in the book to avoid accountability.
As for the Jan. 6 Select Committee, it’s been nearly six months since their last public hearings; it would be surprising if the electorate *was* taking Jan. 6 seriously since—as far as the public knows—Congress isn’t taking it seriously. (Occasional leaks and statements about all the evidence the committee is compiling doesn’t count.)
No one I know who is not a political junkie has a clue about any of the evidence uncovered so far, or that it leads directly through the GOP and lands right at the doorstep of Trump. And to be honest, they are not really interested in hearing about it. And I don’t think there is anything that can/will happen which will change this dynamic.