Editors’ Blog
The upshot of McCarthy’s decision to withdraw all his nominees from the Jan 6th committee is that the committee will only include people who want to investigate the insurrection. It would have been a mistake not to allow the Republicans to be represented on the committee. But having refused good faith participation, Republicans not being there is a good thing. It’s good that Liz Cheney is there. It would be good if there were other Republicans who were actually in support of a real investigation were there. But McCarthy won’t allow that. So here we are. This is the best outcome.
Where Things Stand: An Obvious Rejection 
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision this morning to boot the two Jims from her January 6 select committee was quite the power play.
WTF Is Going On Here? Part II
I’ve had a slew of people asking me what’s behind the apparent about face on vaccination and COVID generally from so many rightwing influencers, media luminaries and officeholders. You’ve also sent in a bunch of emails. I’ll be publishing some of them today. I continue to be baffled by the apparent about-face.
The switcheroo is reminiscent of when the rightwing networks started putting out canned statements recanting any suggestion that voting machine companies had rigged the election. Lots of people are saying they may be reacting to some as yet unknown lawsuit. But that really doesn’t add up. Unless I’m really missing something there’s no entity that would have any standing to sue anyone or plausible shot at winning a case. So it really can’t be that.
Fox News hosts go full vaccine.
Hannity Monday night: “I can’t say it enough. Enough people have died. It absolutely makes sense for many Americans to get vaccinated. I believe in science, I believe in vaccine science.”
Chris Ruddy, owner of Newsmax, announces Biden is doing a totally awesome job with the vaccines which are great.
After months of stalling Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R) gets vaccinated, calls it “safe and effective.”
Right wing homunculus Ben Shapiro: “Get vaxxed. I did. My wife did. My parents did.”
I think my colleague Nicole LaFond get at the heart of what’s going on here in this passage below.
Who Is Tom Barrack?
This big indictment of Trump confidante Tom Barrack is not anything I had on my dance card for today or any time in the future. But as Josh Kovensky suggests in our first write up of this news Barrack had his hands in all sorts of stuff in the Trump world so legal trouble was never hard to imagine. The investigation people were expecting he’d get in trouble for was the one into the Trump inaugural, that Barrack chaired.
Barrack is the guy who put Trump together with Paul Manafort when Manafort was desperate for the gig. He was also at the center of the feeding frenzy of Gulf governments and plutocrats attracted to the fee-for-service culture surrounding the Trump campaign. Barrack was in the mix in numerous parts of the Trump-Russia story but never quite at the center of it.
Where Things Stand: Back To The Regularly Scheduled Programming
It started with “Fox and Friends” host Steve Doocy on Monday morning, urging viewers to get the COVID-19 vaccine because it will “save your life” — all while his co-host Brian Kilmeade hedged that “we’re not doctors” and said the network anchors aren’t going to “go there and give you other medical advice.” (FWIW, Doocy has been a encouraging viewers to get the shot for some time now, unlike some of his co-hosts.)
Enough with Persuasion
I made this point yesterday. I wanted to restate it here and add some further points: The best and most equitable path forward is to restrict non-essential public activities to those who are vaccinated or have non-subjective medical reasons for not being vaccinated.
Now, I say this recognizing that in our current political reality this is highly unlikely to happen. Red states won’t do this and rightwing courts will limit our ability to do this at the federal and state level. But it is important to understand and articulate what the right policy is even if it can’t or won’t be implemented fully. You cannot get anywhere without at least knowing where you are trying to go. At present we are in the perverse position of beginning to add new burdens to the vaccinated/responsible population (mask mandates) to make up for the persistent irresponsibility of the non-vaccinated. The social cost of low vaccination rates should be borne as much as possible by those causing the problem, the voluntarily unvaccinated. So restrict non-essential public activities to those who are vaccinated.
From a TPM Reader …
Watching anti-vaxx harden into a MAGA/GOP loyalty test reminds me, yet again, of an important insight into: Trump’s is a follower of the right-wing irreality, not its leader. And the way we know this to be true is that, if Trump had the power to sway (and not simply surf) the conservative outrage mob, it would have been in his interest to claim credit for developing the vaccines. He can’t because he doesn’t have that ability to do so. Trump is good at getting his name on things that he didn’t build. That’s the best way to understand Trumpism, too.
This isn’t totally right. But there’s a lot in it that is right.
How to Understand This Week’s Senate Fireworks
The insider sheets this morning paint Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats in a pretty tough bind, with Republicans holding most or all of the cards. Schumer is creating a put up or shut up moment for the bipartisan mini-bill by scheduling the first of several votes on the deal for this Wednesday. If Republicans don’t produce 10 votes, either 500 billion or a trillion of ‘hard’ infrastructure falls by the wayside and that in turn endangers the series of compromises that gets all 50 Democratic Senators lined up for the big infrastructure reconciliation package where most of the big progressive priorities are housed.
But this misstates the dynamics at play or rather places the initiative or leverage in Republican hands more than it is. Coverage in the big outfits like the Post seems entirely oblivious to this part of the story and takes Republican stalling tactics at face value, as no more than good faith efforts to write legislative language. Let’s start with the reality that this will be a months long, really complicated process. Democrats have to carry all of it alone with Republicans trying to upend it at every stage. Schumer is pressing forward aggressively now both because Republicans don’t hold the deciding hand here and to ensure that they don’t.
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