“I’m a politician out of the womb.”

This is how the son of Rudy Giuliani announced his bid for the Republican nomination in New York’s gubernatorial race, a fittingly bizarre statement for an under-the-radar bizarre boy.

Yesterday in a close door Senate GOP caucus meeting, Mitch McConnell announced he can’t support the Jan 6th commission deal which Kevin McCarthy’s negotiator negotiated apparently because McCarthy assumed nothing would ever come of it before it blew up in his face. According to Axios, McConnell hasn’t yet come up with any clear reasons why he opposes such a commission other than vague suggestions about its work interfering with the DOJ’s probes. The main concern is that the commission might subpoena members or “alienate members of the GOP base, as well as former President Trump.”

Earlier this week, the number two GOP Senate leader John Thune expressed support for the Commission and said he expected it to pass. Yesterday he said that after hearing that McCarthy had pulled his support he wasn’t so sure.

Just this afternoon we’ve seen two developments on a possible Jan 6th Commission. The House GOP will formally ‘whip’ the vote, i.e., they’ll use the party apparatus to get all their members to vote no. This seems more than anything to be a signal to Donald Trump from McCarthy and Scalise that they are all-in to protect him. Does anyone GOP member not know what’s expected of them from Trump, McCarthy and Scalise? Of course not.

At the same time, TPM alum Sahil Kapur reports that Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) seems to be in support of the bill. Rounds isn’t a Senate fire breather. But he’s not a Romney/Murkowski type either.

And they hardly see it as a pressing issue, at least not right now.

Kevin McCarthy’s turnabout on a Jan 6th Commission proposal that was negotiated by his chosen negotiator and, by all indications, at his direction is a good reminder – for anyone who needed reminding, and really who are you who needed reminding? – of the reality of bipartisan negotiations in the Trump era. As I noted yesterday, Rep. Katko does not appear to have been freelancing. McCarthy chose him to negotiate on his behalf. And reporting suggests Katko worked from McCarthy’s directives and kept him in the loop. But once the deal was announced McCarthy felt he needed to torpedo it.