OPINION:
The United States Congress has a longstanding practice of only being able to focus on one main issue at a time. While you would think that with 435 House Members, countless committees and subcommittees and access to unlimited amounts of information on literally any and all topics one can think of, Congress would be able to walk and chew gum at the same time, but seldom is it the case. Instead, they tend to choose a single priority and spend nearly all their time and effort on that issue.
Congressional Democrats have spent the past few months focused on the riots of January 6th, 2021. They like to call it an insurrection. The Cambridge Dictionary defines the word insurrection as follows: an organized attempt by a group of people to defeat their government or ruler and take control of the country, usually by violence. The key words for me are “organized attempt.” Let there be no doubt that January 6 was an embarrassing blight in American history. It was a shameful yet minor stain on our Republic. It was not, however, an organized attempt to overthrow the government.
There was one guy with big horns on his hat. There were broken windows. There was a crowd charging through the halls like the comic law enforcement mob in the Blues Brothers movie. There were attempts to break down locked doors. There was not, however, any organized plan. No one seized power. No one claimed to seize power. Some of the rioters grabbed souvenirs, a subconscious testament to the fact they didn’t expect anything more to come from their folly. Several requested selfies with law enforcement, an act few classify as assault.
Despite the fact that inflation is over 9%, the highest rate since America reaped the harvest of Jimmy Carter’s economic policies a generation ago, and despite the fact this sky-high inflation has forced the Fed to raise interest rates the most since the current methodology was put into use in the early 1990s, Democrats in Congress have decided to rehash January 6 is the top priority.
People can’t afford to fill their gas tanks. Millions of jobs are going unfilled. Hundreds of thousands of people are pouring over America’s southern border. Race relations remain jagged. Violent crime is reaching unprecedented levels in many large cities. Grocery store shelves that have traditionally held bread or red meat are frequently bare. Health care issues remain largely unresolved and yet Congressional leadership believes their number one priority is January 6, 2021.
Democrats have pulled out all the stops in their tone-deaf effort to shape this as a political victory. The panel seated to lead the House select committee investigation of January 6, 2021, Capitol Hill foolishness is made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans. The Republicans weren’t even chosen by their own party leadership. The names submitted by GOP leadership were rejected by Speaker Pelosi and she instead chose two card-carrying Trump-hating Republicans to provide the “balance” on the committee. In short, you have nine House Members, all of whom blamed Trump for the outrageous breach of January 6th, providing anything but a fair and balanced investigation.
Members feign shock at things such as the President’s prepared remarks in response to the January 6th fiasco having been edited before he delivered them. Virtually every President changes his remarks, often multiple times, before delivering them for any speech. There is nothing sinister about it. Each leader recognizes his exact words matter and thus, commonly tinkers with his exact words right up until speech time.
The bottom line is this. The Fall 2022 elections are looking as though they will be a sweeping victory for the Republicans. The reason is largely because of a tanking economy, now officially in recession, high inflation, high-interest rates, exploding crime rates, chaos at the American border and seemingly no one addressing any of those issues. Having no solutions, Democrat leadership is hoping to once again make Donald Trump the bogeyman. They are consciously ignoring the issues average Americans are worried about and instead are scheduling prime-time hearings blaming the former President for January 6th. The hope on their part is that this will lead to victory in November. This is a losing strategy. Americans want something different.
Americans want a Congress that can come together to work on inflation, high interest, a poor economy, high crime and porous borders. Joe and Susie
Lunchbucket are tired of the red team fighting the blue team and ignoring the people on the sidelines, so the odds that voters choose “change” in November are pretty high. Expect the Republicans to be in control of the House of Representatives come January.
Regardless of your politics, should you release a sigh of relief and look forward to a more productive Congress? Maybe. Maybe not.
Several high-ranking GOP lawmakers have outlined their priorities in the event Republicans are indeed in control of the House in 2023 and at the top of many of those lists? Investigating Hunter Biden. Don’t misunderstand me, if Hunter Biden was involved in wrong-doing, and particularly if his Dad, currently a placeholder at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, was involved in any way, that is most certainly news, but if Republicans use their position of power in the new year to push political agendas rather than address the problems Americans care about, nothing will have changed and an opportunity to really make a difference will have been squandered.
In the most ironic of poorly thought out promises, some GOP Members are clamoring for an investigation into the Democrats’ formation of the Jan. 6 select committee in the first place. That would be using Congress’ time and money (your money) to do a politically motivated investigation into a politically motivated investigation.
Shake your head in disgust with me, please.
There is some hope, however. Congressman Jim Jordan, likely to be Chairman of Judiciary, after listing several items the GOP should tackle, tossed in, “…we also have to pass legislation that’s going to help families across this great country.” At least it is on his radar.
More explicit was Drew Ferguson, Chief Deputy Whip for the House GOP, who said “We’ve got to focus on fuel, food, crime, education, border.”
If the GOP wins in the fall and if they follow Ferguson’s advice, the country can get back on track and maybe, just maybe, America’s confidence in its elected representatives can begin to climb again.
If however, the primary focus of the new Congress becomes Hunter Biden and things like fuel, food, crime and education get pushed aside, the GOP will have failed just as badly as Nancy Pelosi and her team of partisan hacks.
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