Pelosi’s Chess Move

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi showed her strategic brilliance again in the multistage chess move on staffing her Select Committee on the January 6 Insurrection.

After appointing Liz Chaney straight away because of how badly her own party had treated her; which sent the message that she was ready for honest political rivals to participate on this committee, she then gave House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy the opportunity to do the right thing and appoint sincere Republicans to help get the answers Americans want. He didn’t, of course, and tried to sabotage the committee with a couple of human hand grenades in Jim Jordan and Jim Banks. But Pelosi held a reverse card and vetoed those two choices. McCarthy then pulled all of his appointments in a move he probably saw as clever. It wasn’t.

Now she appoints Adam Kinzinger, An Illnois Republican and military veteran who is seen by all but the cultists as a stand up guy whose loyalty is to the country. This raises the esteem of the committee in the eyes of independents and moderate Republicans.

If you don’t think that Pelosi had this figured from the start, realize that she could have appointed Kinzinger straight away, a job he would have certainly accepted. But doing so at that time would have done little more then label him as an anti-Trump RINO, and left the committee looking more partisan. It is this timing, apparently thought out well ahead, that shows her brilliance. Build a committee without Republican input and it looks partisan; let the Republicans make a blatantly partisan move, and the respond with a measured selection that solidifies the sincerity and gravitas of the committee.

Somewhere in this piece I should remind all of who in the public Pelosi needs to impress with these choice. Everyone on the left is already on board. They’re all just glad that this committee is formed and will investigate. And those in the cult of Trump are unreachable by any means. That leaves independents and moderate Republicans. Years of polls show that people in the country don’t split down the middle in party identification. With a small fluctuation from time to time the country is typically about 30% Republican, 30% Democratic, and 40% independent. That slides up and down for both parties, but the shift isn’t from one to the other, but back and forth between one party and independent. Currently the trend has shown more D and less R, with the R being only 24% in the Gallup poll covering the first half of June, 2021, which was the latest at this writing. In that poll Democrats placed at 30%, and independents at 44%. This isn’t a record, but on the high side for independents over time. But the survey always shows independents being the largest group. And while these people skew left and right and all over the place at times, the reason they identify as independent is that they would rather pick the person over the party. This doesn’t mean they are always politically savvy, or even well informed. But it does mean that they see themselves as open to information, and decidedly not loyal to a party.

These are the people the Pelosi needs to appeal to. Not only will they decide the next election, one where democracy itself may hinge on Democrats retaining majorities in both houses, but they will influence their Representatives and Senators in how they vote on legislation. Thus it is crucial for this select committee to be view by independents as earnest and non-partisan. The right has tried to dismiss the need for an investigation at all, and spent a lot of effort in trying to paint the actions of January 6 as benign; an effort that came across insulting to the intelligence of the public, and a clear attempt to gaslight the people. Others suggested that since there were some police and FBI investigations going on, there was no need for Congress to take part. This was a better counter-argument, because most Americans are not civically literate enough to understand the greater powers Congress has to subpoena evidence and compel testimony versus what police agencies can do, and the amount of time it would take for them to do so. Nor are they astute to the kinds of recommendations such a committee could make to prevent future such attacks that law enforcement would be reticent to do, as those policies would be the purview of Congress. But still, support remains for Congress investigating this attack on the Capitol in a manner similar to our 9/11 Commission. And people in the middle seem to have a growing suspicion of those who are trying so hard to stop it.

The play House Minority Leader McCarthy made early was to put the kibosh on a bipartisan Congressional Commission, by lobbying Senate Republicans to filibuster it. They did, and that Commission died. That Commission would have been equal in all parts between the parties, and included both the House and Senate, but with Trump being against it McCarthy and other Republicans fell in line. Their forecast was that any committee set up by Democrats alone would look as partisan as their own Benghazi Commission that spent four years smearing Hillary Clinton, only to decide in the end she did nothing wrong.

But here they have failed, because of the masterful strategy of Speaker Pelosi. It is now more likely that independents will pay attention to this investigation with a favorable eye towards its findings. And McCarthy’s attempts to turn it into a circus are raising more eyebrows. I suspect that independents and moderate Republicans are more inclined to think certain Republican elected officials have something to hide regarding the actions of January 6.

What to expect now from the right is continued attempts to delegitimize the committee through innuendo and accusations of anti-Trump sentiment. But they now have a taller hill to climb. It is quite possible that the more they complain and holler, the more distrust they bring on themselves. To paraphrase a line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, me thinks though doth protest too much. And the minority leader now is saying that House Republicans will form their own committee to investigate various elements of political violence that transpired around the country the previous year. But because of the actions already taken, this looks the the distraction it is intended to be. It will have some effect, but after this exchange over the select committee I judge that it will not get the kind of attention McCarthy wants.

Congratulations Madam Speaker, you have established credibility in this commission that few thought possible. I look forward to seeing the findings.