Republicans admit they don’t want Jan. 6 Commission because it makes them look bad: analysis

Republicans have made it clear that they don't want the Jan. 6 Commission because it's going to expose wrongdoing by members of their party or showcase their support for insurrectionists.

Writing for the Washington Post, Aaron Blake cited Sen. John Thune (R-SD), who confessed that Republicans don't want anything to do with talking about their unpopular former president, Donald Trump.

"A lot of our members, and I think this is true of a lot of House Republicans, want to be moving forward and not looking backward," said Thune, according to CNN. "Anything that gets us rehashing the 2020 elections, I think, is a day lost on being able to draw a contrast between us and the Democrats' very radical left-wing agenda."

Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) went so far as to support a bill in January that was incorporated into the Jan. 6 Commission. Just four months later, Norman now opposes it, claiming it was different and "their intent is just to keep the spotlight on Trump, and that's not right." It's unclear how a Jan. 6 Commission could take place without addressing Trump's involvement.

But it was Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who made it clear there was something else at play. Speaking to the press on Thursday morning about the commission, he addressed whether it would be a conflict of interest for members to be involved in a commission when they may have been part of Jan. 6 or witness to it. McCarthy felt that was fine. When he was asked whether he's concerned his own members might have been involved, he simply walked away. It was something the ex-GOP group The Lincoln Project called "a cover-up."

Blake explained that the GOP-proposed legislation from January that is included in the latest bill garnered the support of 30 House Republicans. When it came time to vote, however, "16 of the 30 Republican co-sponsors of the bill voted against it."

The justification for opposing the commission seems to change almost daily. The first comment was that the Jan. 6 Commission shouldn't focus on Jan. 6 but look at things that happened in the year before. The second complaint was that the Jan. 6 Commission is redundant because there are over 400 people who've been arrested by the Justice Department who will stand trial. However, the same was true for the 9/11 Commission and Republicans didn't oppose that.

"It's now increasingly somehow partisan, despite being the product of a bipartisan negotiation entered into with the House minority leader's blessing and gaining rather significant bipartisan support in the House — not just from the crew that voted to impeach Trump, but from plenty of others, too," wrote Blake.

He closed by explaining that if the GOP felt this way then they could have included it in their list of demands from Rep. John Katko (R-NY), but McCarthy didn't communicate that to him until after the fact, which is when he pulled the rug out.

"Perhaps we can just chalk that up to the continually rudderless leadership of McCarthy," said Blake. "But regardless of how we got here, it sure points to the political expediency being on decidedly one side — and not the one McCarthy and [Mitch] McConnell are pointing to."

Read the full analysis at the Washington Post.