February 07, 2022 10:54 AM UTC

RNC Slams Home MAGA Ownership Of Republican Party

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• by: Colorado Pols

CNN reports on the resolution passed by the Republican National Committee this weekend to formally censure Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, and officially give notice that they will no longer receive support from the national party going forward–the latter sanction only mattering to Rep. Cheney, since Kinzinger has already announced he will not run for re-election.

In the course of censuring Cheney and Kinzinger, the RNC made an assertion about the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol that has provoked even more backlash than the fully-anticipated punishment of those two representatives:

In a resolution formally censuring GOP Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, the Republican National Committee on Friday described the events surrounding the January 6, 2021 insurrection — which have been at the center of a House probe — as “legitimate political discourse.”

…The RNC, which condemned the “senseless acts of violence” in the immediate aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection, later Friday tried to clarify the inclusion of the term “legitimate political discourse” in the resolution. In a statement to CNN from Chair Ronna McDaniel, the committee drew a distinction between those who did not commit violence on Jan. 6 and the rioters who violently stormed the US Capitol.

“Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger crossed a line,” McDaniel said. “They chose to join Nancy Pelosi in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens who engaged in legitimate political discourse that had nothing to do with violence at the Capitol.”

Significantly,

Those final words — “that had nothing to do with violence at the Capitol” — were not in the resolution adopted Friday. [Pols emphasis]

The campaign by Republicans to rewrite the history of January 6th in order to minimize the violence and, more importantly, the responsibility of fellow Republicans up to and including former President Donald Trump is not new but is becoming increasingly brazen. Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia infamously suggested last summer that video of rioters rampaging through the building looked like a “normal tourist visit”–and was roundly condemned for it. Over a year after the events of that day, Republicans have evolved from initially condemning what they acknowledged was a “failed insurrection” (Mitch McConnell’s words) to defending an exercise in “legitimate political discourse” that they only belatedly and half-heartedly “clarify” doesn’t include the violence.

It is a turnabout of Orwellian proportions.

Last month, when Colorado Democrats introduced a resolution in the legislature calling on Congress to pass the stalled voting rights bill, state Rep. Dave Williams offered an amendment that Colorado GOP chairwoman Kristi Burton Brown and even Williams’ nominal boss House Minority Leader Hugh McKean tried to downplay:

Two-thirds of the GOP House Minority voted for this amendment.

Kristi Burton Brown is desperate to maintain a pretense of separation between the violence of January 6th and her party’s message in 2022, and by extension between her professed desire to “move on from 2020” and the overwhelming majority of fellow Republicans who have no interest in doing so. When Hugh McKean and KBB say “the 2020 election is over,” which they both have in response to the amendment above which McKean voted against, we can’t tell you anymore who it is they are speaking for. Because it’s not a majority of Republicans–and as of today, the Republican National Committee is on Team Hanks as well.

And if McKean and KBB no longer speak for their party, they are not in the right jobs.