OPINION:
Nancy Pelosi’s twilight years may thus far be bereft of achievement from a governance standpoint, but her status as a formidable political tactician remains intact. It’s a reputation predicated on the Speaker’s demonstrated fidelity to a scorched earth brand of Washington politics.
Mrs. Pelosi has ceased being a force for advancing specific liberal legislative goals and has become wholly consumed with the broader campaign to demonize not just her political opposition but huge swaths of the American public.
Her two sham impeachments and the manufactured Russia-gate scandal have made the Soviet kangaroo courts look amateurish. Now, the new January 6th Select Committee is Mrs. Pelosi’s Impeachment 3.0. Now on the new committee, Congressmen Adam Schiff and Jamie Raskin were lead impeachment managers in 2020 and 2021, respectively. No one should be shocked that the committee chairman, Mississippi Democrat Bennie Thompson, said this week that he expects the so-called work will go “well into next year.”
At the White House, Jen Psaki piled on linking the President’s increasingly desperate opposition to new voter integrity laws to conspiracy theories that “culminated in an assault on our Capitol.”
Like the impeachment theater before them, the forthcoming made-for-tv hearings will preempt programming and undoubtedly be a boost for CNN’s flagging post-Trump ratings. The mainstream news media will flash the video and images of that terrible day across screens for months. The blue checks on Twitter will gleefully bash Republicans, conservatives, and even America itself. Ms. Cheney will have her parting shot at Trump, while Republicans will flail about looking like a bunch of angry Gomer Pyles.
Republicans, white supremacy, right-wing extremists, and of course Trump supporters will be collectively blamed for an attempted insurrection, as Democrats put their leftist smear against their own country on steroids.
Through the whole charade Speaker Nancy Pelosi, now 81 and at times exhibiting the same Bidenesque symptoms of decline, will watch as the media and Big Tech participate in her scheme as they did during the two impeachment debacles.
The committee will provide no additional material information that wasn’t uncovered by previous investigations. What happened on January 6 was tragic, criminal, and appalling. Vandalizing the Capitol showed the gross power of the mob mentality. However, the idea that this rag-tag band of people, some wearing funny hats and animal skins, were going to overthrow and take control of the institutions of the U.S. government for themselves is ludicrous. The idea that their actions could have ever prevented the certification of the election is equally without merit.
Though the hearings will further drill the word ‘insurrection’ into our collective consciousness to blunt GOP momentum in the 2022 midterms, the events of January 6 will never credibly meet the legal definition. It is, after all, a legal term, not that the Left-Wing media seem to care.
No one arrested for the riot has been charged with that crime under the U.S. Code for a reason. It’s all just part of another Pelosi must-see cable news marathon. We know what happened. The same policing tactics that allowed Ferguson, Missouri, to be torched and cities looted during the Black Lives Matter riots were employed on January 6. Capitol Police opened doors and gates. They made a conscious decision not to engage most of the protestors due to inadequate force levels that didn’t match the intelligence they had about possible demonstrations on that day. They allowed themselves to be overrun, giving those few who intended violence and destruction a foothold in the building.
As we saw with Mrs. Pelosi’s two impeachment cases, the facts, the evidence, and the law won’t matter. Only the leftist politics will, and Americans will be left saying, “here we go again.” Impeachment 3.0 will be the last gasp of a long career that has careened toward the kind of abuse of power that saps the confidence of a nation.
• Tom Basile, host of Newsmax Television’s “America Right Now,” is an author and adjunct professor at Fordham University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, where he teaches earned media strategy.
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