Three months into the new Congress, the House Republican majority hasn’t exactly racked up a slate of legislative victories. But few find this surprising: With President Joe Biden in the White House, and voters expanding the Democratic majority in the Senate, GOP officials knew that they’d be attending few bill-signing ceremonies.
Instead, House Republicans knew from the start that their focus would be on oversight, targeting the president, his administration, and his family. They also intended to pursue a seemingly endless list of perceived ideological foes and assorted conspiracy theories. The political fireworks, the right assumed, would be awesome.
At least, that was the idea. Politico published a report this morning noting that the GOP’s investigatory crusade has “sputtered out of the gate.”
House Republicans charged into the majority vowing an investigative onslaught against President Joe Biden and Democrats. But they’ve gotten almost nowhere so far — and some in the party are getting frustrated.
The Politico article quoted one GOP aide who conceded that on Capitol Hill, Republicans agree that the so-called “weaponization” panel run by Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan was off to a “rocky start.”
The assessment was more than fair. As regular readers know, the panel’s first big hearing was an embarrassing display, and it was soon followed by revelations that the FBI “whistleblowers” the Ohio Republican has been touting for months aren’t actually whistleblowers, and their recent behind-the-scenes testimony was literally unbelievable.
The second hearing was no better, and in the committee’s third hearing, Jordan invited GOP witnesses to testify and then refused to let Democrats ask them questions — a move Rep. Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts described as “pretty disgraceful.”
Jordan responded that the Jan. 6 select committee didn’t allow Republicans to cross-examine witnesses. Reminded that his claim was the opposite of reality, and the panel’s GOP members conducted extensive cross-examinations, Jordan’s team claimed that the Republicans on the Jan. 6 committee didn’t count as real Republicans.
Meanwhile, Rep. Stacey Plaskett, the non-voting delegate from the Virgin Islands and the top Democrat on the “weaponization” panel, recently explained that while she’s had good working relationships with other GOP committee chairs, Jordan is “not an honest broker.”
It’s against this backdrop that the Ohio Republican and his conspiratorial panel have also confronted criticisms from disappointed GOP insiders, Republican-aligned media, and influential leaders from the conservative movement. “Rocky start,” indeed. House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, meanwhile, is the GOP’s other key committee crusader, but in recent months, he’s managed to do little more than annoy his colleagues and make an excessive number of appearances on conservative media outlets. Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana, a member of the House Republican leadership, told Politico, “All of us hear from constituents that they’re very anxious for results. And our task, part of our task, is explaining to people what this process is about, and what to expect.” Given everything we’ve seen so far, what people should expect is very few meaningful results.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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