May 20, 2021 09:54 AM UTC

Burying January 6th With Colorado Republicans

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• by: Colorado Pols

Ernest Luning reports for the Colorado Springs Gazette’s political blog on yesterday’s vote in the U.S. House to establish a commission to investigate the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of ex-President Donald Trump seeking to disrupt the certification of the Electoral College vote–a goal shared by at at least two Republican members of Congress from Colorado, Reps. Lauren Boebert and Doug Lamborn, who joined in the objections to certifying the vote on the House floor both before and after the rioters stormed the building:

Colorado’s three House Republican members were not among the 35 GOP lawmakers who voted Wednesday to create an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The measure won approval 252-175 in the Democratic-controlled House over objections from Republican leaders and former President Donald Trump, with all four of the state’s Democrats voting in favor.

We’ll start with a necessary point for everyone to acknowledge: 35 House Republicans defying their leadership (not to mention the ever-watchful ex-President) and voting for a commission to investigate the January 6th riot at the U.S. Capitol is a very big deal. The suspension of critical thinking required to separate Trump and high-ranking Republicans who backed his sore loser backlash against the outcome of the 2020 presidential elections from the violence on January 6th is just too much for anyone not totally surrendered to Trump’s cult of personality. The cause and effect is so damningly obvious that even many Republicans, including 35 members of Congress who were in the building that day, can’t just set it aside for political expediency.

Of the three Republican minority members of Colorado’s congressional delegation, by far the biggest disappointment from yesterday’s vote was Rep. Ken Buck. As readers know, Buck has gone rogue from the MAGA message by conceding Biden’s victory relatively quickly (mid-December, we’re grading on a generous curve), and working to dispel misinformation about Colorado’s election systems that also happened to refute the larger bogus case Trump was making about election fraud in contested states.

Yesterday, Buck tried again to hold on to his shrinking plot of faux middle ground, and failed:

U.S. Rep. Ken Buck, R-Windsor, said in a statement that the attack on the Capitol was wrong and that he “unequivocally condemned the violence and urged that the perpetrators be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law” but said he was voting against legislation he called “a blatant exercise in partisanship” that was “too narrow in scope.”

This is a similar talking point to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who in the wake of the violence on January 6th condemned the President’s role in causing it but has since then steadily backed away from putting that condemnation into action, either by impeachment or now via a commission to investigate. Unfortunately for Buck, there were way too many defections among his fellow House Republicans to hide behind this false equivalence argument likening the January 6th attack to other protests and acts of violence. What makes January 6th different is the fact that Republicans all the way up to President Trump played a direct role in inciting the violence.

Which brings us back to Lamborn and Boebert:

Due to their pathetic & failed governing agenda, the Democrats have just created another Robert Mueller style witch hunt to distract us from everything that they’re ACTUALLY doing in the House. This Commission is a farce & anything that comes of it has no credibility. I voted NO!

— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) May 20, 2021

At least in Boebert’s case, nothing yells louder than a guilty conscience. Boebert’s full-throated advocacy for overturning the results of the 2020 election by any means necessary in the leadup to January 6th, and her at-least idiotic (hopefully that’s all) Tweets about Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s location while rioters were entering the building, mean she would logically be a target of this commission’s investigation. It therefore makes perfect sense why Boebert doesn’t want a commission! When the guilty get a vote on whether they should be held accountable, unsurprisingly most of them will vote no.

But that is not justice. Justice for January 6th is, hopefully, yet to come.