This commentary is by Bob Stannard of Manchester, an author, musician and former state legislator and lobbyist.
I changed political parties in 1988. Many of you may be surprised to learn that I served in the Vermont House of Representatives as a Republican. I was told that I had to run as a Republican if I wanted to win, but that it didn’t really matter once you were in the Statehouse.
That was true because the Republicans controlled the House, Senate, lieutenant governor and governor’s offices. At best, I was more of a Jim Jeffords Republican than a Mitch McConnell Republican. I changed parties because after six years it was clear, even back then, that the GOP had morphed into the party of NO. Thirty-three years later, not much has changed.
In May, the U.S. House passed a resolution to perform an investigation as to exactly what happened with the insurrection of Jan. 6. Thirty-five House Republicans joined with the Democrats to pass the initiative; 175 Republicans voted against it.
The day before the vote, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said that he could support an investigation. Once the bill passed, he changed his mind and vowed to oppose any bipartisan investigation.
Poor Mitch. The last thing in the world he wants is to talk about the Republican insurrection of Jan. 6. Why? Because it doesn’t look good for Republicans. The GOP has suffered great joint pain in their attempt to twist the truth of what happened with their riots. First they said Antifa was behind it. They weren’t. Then it was Black Lives Matter. They weren’t. They have been unsuccessful at pinning the blame on anyone so they are left with lying about what happened.
Some Republican House members and senators have actually said, with a straight face, that there weren’t any riots and that it was no different than an average tourist day. It wasn’t. Interestingly enough, those who are now making these allegations are the same people who were hiding, quaking in fear of what they now say were just tourists.
Though they may think that The Big Lie may be the best optics, wouldn’t you think that the GOP would want to get to the bottom of how and why this happened and put it behind them? You would and you would be wrong. The GOP is in a tough position. They backed the wrong guy five years ago. They’ve been hoping and praying that they could survive that one little mistake, but it’s becoming clearer every day that things are only going to get worse. The truth is not their friend and they know it.
What might the truth look like?
We might learn that their ousted president played a bigger role in the insurrection than we think he did. Did he coordinate with his recently pardoned crook, Roger Stone, to ensure that a large crowd would attend? We might discover that Republican House and Senate members like Rep. Mo Brooks and Sen. Josh Hawley played a much bigger role in providing details before insurrection day. Did the House Minority Leader, Kevin McCarthy, play a role? After all, on the day after the riots. he took to the House floor to condemn the act as well as his party’s president. Not a week later. he flew down to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring and cry “mea culpa.”
The Republican insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021, is just that; a Republican insurrection. Do you recall anyone wearing Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer or Hillary hats? Me neither. It was orchestrated by supporters of the most failed president in modern history. The former president encouraged and incited his followers to do exactly what we all saw them do: attempt to thwart our democracy. It didn’t take long after the initial condemnation for the Republican leadership, along with the Republican Party, to quickly twist the events of Jan. 6 into a completely false narrative now known as “The Big Lie”.
We should not be surprised, should we? In the four years the former president held office, he was recorded lying to the American people 30,573 times. That’s a lot of lying, but it worked on 70 million people. And therein lies the tragedy of where we are today. We would rather believe the lies over the truth. And we’ve learned that we can now count on the Republican Party to promote and perpetuate the lies being told.
No, Mitch McConnell will never, ever support a thorough, bipartisan investigation into what really happened on Jan. 6, because he knows full well what really happened. Republican supporters stormed our Capitol with the mission of overturning a free and fair election, in an event that for most Americans was as repulsive as it was disgusting.
Sorry, Mitch, but it’s not going away. The truth always comes out and that’s a big problem for you and your party. We will all welcome the day when the Republican Party reverts to being the party of Lincoln.
