Both moves were motivated by the same belief: That by opposing an independent commission and by refusing to keep any of their choices on the House committee, Republicans would successfully short-circuit the effectiveness and impact of the investigation before it got started. The idea being that without Republican participation the whole thing would look like a partisan witch hunt, with little practical damage, politically speaking, to the GOP.
With each passing week. however, those twin decisions look worse and worse for Republicans. Consider what we’ve learned about the January 6 committee’s work in just the last few months:
What these series of developments mean is that the committee has already made more headway than Republican leaders believed they would when they made the decision to walk away from the panel.
And what’s worse for GOP leaders is that they have little visibility into the inner workings of the committee. (While both Cheney and Kinzinger are Republicans, they have been largely ostracized from their party because of their willingness to speak out against Trump’s actions on January 6, 2021. That means they have little incentive to keep their fellow Republicans apprised of the goings-on inside the committee.)
The more people — especially those at a senior level like Short — who cooperate with the committee, the more difficult it will be Republicans to dismiss the findings of the report. This won’t be about what some Democratic members say happened on January 6 and what role (if any) Trump played in it. Instead, it will be Republicans at highest levels of the Trump administration telling the story of that day. That’s far more politically problematic for Republicans in Congress.
Put simply: Republican leaders made a big bet that they could paint the committee as nothing more than a group of disgruntled Democrats using what happened on January 6 to further their own partisan agenda. That bet looks like a loser as of today, with the committee seemingly poised to deliver a far more definitive — and impactful — review of that fateful day than many expected.
