There’s no chance Kevin McCarthy, GOP House leader, deliberately sabotaged his own party; so let’s take that explanation off the table right away. He’s just a lousy chess player.
As an MSNBC journalist explains (here), when McCarthy “dispatched a trusted ally … to negotiate the terms of an independent commission to examine the Jan. 6 attack,” he “made sure to include unreasonable demands he expected Democrats to reject.” But they didn’t reject them.
So, “When Democrats agreed to [his] terms anyway, McCarthy refused to take ‘yes’ for an answer and rejected the compromise he’d asked for. At that point, lawmakers moved on to Plan B: They’d create a bipartisan, special select committee to uncover the facts that McCarthy said he was eager to learn.”
Then, “As part of the process, GOP leaders were invited to recommend a slate of House Republicans to participate in the investigation, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had the final call on whether or not they qualified. McCarthy picked five members, two of whom were rejected for being anti-election radicals, though Pelosi was willing to accept the other three Republicans chosen for the panel. Outraged, McCarthy quickly announced a boycott of the committee.”
And then, “Pelosi offered him an opportunity to have three far-right Republicans participate in this investigation. He instead chose to have zero.”
Net result: “As chess moves go, this didn’t exactly position the GOP for success.”
But it was a win for democracy and Americans interested in learning the truth about the Capitol insurrection because, “There is no grandstanding and no preening. There are no petty partisan squabbles. …. There is only the relentless march of evidence.”
McCarthy’s loss-making play hasn’t gone unnoticed.
“A couple of months ago, a senior House GOP aide told NBC News, in reference to McCarthy’s boycott, ‘I would say it’s absolutely a strategic mistake.’ Such talk is growing louder. The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman said last week that some Republicans are privately ‘angry’ with McCarthy, ‘believing he walked away too soon.’ Yesterday, Donald Trump went considerably further. ‘Unfortunately, a bad decision was made,’ the former president said during a radio interview. He added that it ‘was a bad decision not to have representation on that committee. That was a very, very foolish decision.’”
It sure was. It’s also a spectacular example of how playing politics with a serious issue can backfire: “McCarthy seemed to believe he was punishing House Democrats … when he refused to participate in the process he previously supported. If he’d only thought ahead a bit more, [he] would’ve realized he was doing far more harm to his own interests.”
But isn’t that the point? Republicans don’t think, they knee-jerk. And they can’t play political chess, much less govern.
If you believe the pundits, voters angry at Biden about things beyond his control are about to hand power to a party that not only can’t solve those problems, but has a track record of making things worse (e.g., the pandemic). That’s not thinking, either; and that, too, would be a strategic mistake.