The Senate pushed action into Friday on a bill to create an independent commission to study the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by Donald Trump’s supporters. Senate hits snag on vote for Jan. 6 Capitol riot commission:
Republicans still plan to block the measure using the filibuster, but snags on another, unrelated bill forced delays that prevented the Senate from taking a procedural vote as planned on Thursday.
There were no signs GOP opposition had relented, even as the family of a Capitol Police officer who collapsed and died after the siege and other officers who battled rioters asked them to support the commission. The insurrection was the worst attack on the Capitol in 200 years and interrupted the certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s win over Trump.
Senator Joe Manchin’s hometown newspaper, the Charleston Gazzette-Mail, in an editorial opinion gives him a permission slip to break the Senate filibuster rule. Will he now finally act? Gazette-Mail editorial: Manchin finally getting off the fence:
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., released a statement Thursday saying there is “no excuse” for any Republican in the Senate to vote against forming a bipartisan commission to investigate the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
Manchin, who can sometimes be centrist to the point of bewilderment, had the guts to call out Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., for his efforts to kill House-passed legislation to establish the commission. Manchin noted that Democrats have nodded to every request Republicans have made to ensure the investigation is nonpartisan and, therefore, there’s no reason they shouldn’t support the initiative.
“Mitch McConnell has made this his political position, thinking it will help his 2022 elections,” Manchin said. “They do not believe the truth will set you free, so they continue to live in fear.”
My statement on the January 6th Commission: pic.twitter.com/ZfNhQfKzmh
— Senator Joe Manchin (@Sen_JoeManchin) May 27, 2021
Examine those words for a minute. They actually say a lot.
That Republicans still won’t back the commission shouldn’t surprise Manchin. McConnell is a master of moving the goalposts. But at least Manchin recognizes that for what it is this time.
And Manchin’s right. This is a political game to McConnell. He’s concerned about how damaging further examining the assault on the Capitol, spurred on by a defeated Donald Trump, will be to the GOP. He’s also afraid how it might anger the disgraced former president, who still has a death grip on the GOP’s neck.
The problem is that a former president helping sick a mob on the Capitol to try and overturn an election, and the resulting deaths, injuries and damage to this nation, both material and metaphysical, isn’t a partisan issue. It was McConnell himself who railed against the rioters hours after they had been driven from the Capitol. Now, of course, he just wants to move on. But this isn’t one of those things the United States can just put in the rear-view. It happened, and how and why, including if any members of Congress encouraged or aided insurrectionists, needs to be fully explored. Manchin gets that. Hopefully, that means he’ll fight to break any attempts at stalling this out.
McConnell is wrong to make this cynically political. He’s also wrong if he thinks thwarting a commission investigation will shelter the GOP from the fallout of Jan. 6. Hundreds of people have been arrested. Many of them livestreamed themselves breaking into the Capitol, destroying property, looking through records and assaulting police. There’s even video of rioters following the tweets of Trump and some of his cronies mid-riot, almost looking to the dispatches as coded orders.
The political damage to the GOP is done, and Democrats have more than enough material to hit Republicans with in 2022. All that’s really left to be determined is how many Americans and Republican politicians are with Trump no matter what. They’re not adding anyone, they’re in retention mode. And 
they’re only keeping many of the politicians they’ve got in their camp through, as Manchin said, fear.
McConnell could break that Trump anchor, were he to view this as he should. He and other Republicans could show, for once, that it’s more than party that matters — that there’s right and wrong. But McConnell won’t do that. He doesn’t do things. He only stops things from getting done. It’s the signature of his entire nihilistic career.
That leaves it up to centrists like Manchin to quit straddling the fence and put the shoulder to the wheel, when the task is as obviously important as saving U.S. democracy and showing that some truths shouldn’t be buried — or warped by deceptive narratives.
Where are the GQP-friendly newspapers in Arizona, in particular the lame-ass Arizona Republic fka the Arizona Republican, Senator Kyrsten Sinema’s hometown newspaper, giving her a permission slip to break the Senate filibuster rule?