And what I caught glimpses of more than anything else was a massive display of guard troops—not quite what you would see marching through Pyongyang, North Korea, to commemorate Dear Leader’s birthday, but enough to make you wonder what kind of state you were in, democratic or autocratic.
The putative excuse was to avoid violence and a repetition of the occurrences of Jan. 6, but a hundred troops or so would have been more than sufficient to have blocked entry to the U.S. Capitol that day, had they been so empowered.
For the inauguration, we had 20,000 to 25,000 troops, an army of greater size than President Abraham Lincoln employed to prevent the invasion of Washington during the Civil War.
All this with no known threats, at least none reported. (The actual “insurrection” at the Capitol was far less than your average weeknight tussle in Portland, Oregon, for the past six months.)
The attendance estimates at the inaugural were around 2,000, less than many high school basketball games draw.
What was the purpose then of all this saber-rattling on a day that was supposed to be a celebration of the peaceful transfer of power in a democratic republic, other than an ominous show of force, a reminder to the unruly masses that “stability” had returned and you had better accept it?
More of that in a moment, but first, who is going to tell us what really happened on Jan. 6, and who instigated it? The FBI? There’s a reliable source!
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants a special commission, à la 9/11. Perhaps Reps. Jerrold Nadler and Adam Schiff will be available to head it up and, if not them, some other impartial friends of justice like the new district attorneys whose campaigns were financed by George Soros’s Open Society Foundations. Or even former FBI Director James Comey himself, who has thus far eluded prosecution and is bidding to make a comeback by asserting that it’s Trump, not he, who should be in jail.
It went, “On behalf of the Senate, with all due respect to our distinguished Speaker and our colleagues in the House, I have to note not only did we swear in a son and daughter of the Senate to these offices, but these former Senators skipped the House altogether.”
Mild chortles all around, but it was clear why Rush was playing this for us. These key politicians of both parties were signaling to each other their mutual pleasure at the return of the Uniparty. Ding-dong, the wicked orange-haired witch was dead.
Indeed, over the past few days, McConnell had betrayed Trump—not to mention the vast majority of his 75 million-plus voters—to the extent that the now-minority leader implied he might even vote yes on the ex-president’s impeachment after Trump left office, should it come to that, thus assuring Trump could never run again.
What was going on, I wondered? Did McConnell want to destroy the Republican Party that was more allied with Trump than ever, according to some polls?
“First, McConnell doesn’t care about holding a majority position in the Senate. Whether he is a majority leader or a minority leader doesn’t matter to McConnell. In fact, McConnell’s political skill-set does better in the minority than the majority.
“The preferred political position for Mitch McConnell is where he has between 45 and 49 Republican senators, and the Democrats hold the majority with around 55. Of course, with Senator Harry Reid’s retirement, this would now imply Majority Leader Chuck Schumer holding office.
“Why does McConnell prefer the minority position?
“The answer is where you have had to actually follow Mitch McConnell closely to see how he works. When the Majority has around 52 to 55 seats, they need McConnell to give them 8 to 9 votes to overcome the three-fifths (60 vote) threshold for their legislative needs. It is in the process of trade and payment for those 8 to 9 votes where McConnell makes more money, and holds more power, than as a sitting Majority Leader.
“The 60-vote threshold, and McConnell’s incredible skill-set in the minority, is where he shines. Each of the needed votes to achieve 60 is worth buckets of indulgence to the minority leader and those on K-Street who need the Senate to support their legislative constructs. The votes to get to 60 are worth a lot of money.”
As they used to say on Fox News, when it was worth watching: “We report. You decide.”
And speaking again of who instigated the “insurrection” at the Capitol, apparently, Antifa just smashed in the windows of the Democratic Party in Oregon.
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