Republicans want to have Jan. 6 both ways.
On the one hand, they would have Americans believe the insurrection was just an expression of "legitimate political discourse," the language the Republican National Committee used on Friday to censure Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) for participating in the investigation of that day's events. The RNC was echoing the stance held by former President Donald Trump, who had suggested he might someday pardon the rioters, if only he somehow returns to the Oval Office. "If I run and if I win, we will treat those people from Jan. 6 fairly," he said at a rally last month.
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Taken as a whole, the GOP outlook seems to be this: Jan. 6 is no big deal and also Democrats must be punished for allowing it to happen.
This is what actually happened that day, and this is who did it:
It's probably unreasonable to expect a coherent take on the insurrection from a party that takes its cues from perhaps the most incoherent president of modern times. And as I've previously pointed out, the GOP approach to Jan. 6 — aside from simply absolving all the bad actors of responsibility — mostly amounts to an ugly bit of victim-blaming. Everybody is responsible for the violence of the insurrection except the man who incited it, and the people who were incited.
Perhaps throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks is intended to mask the Trumpist GOP's embrace of political violence. But nobody's fooled. We ought to have some more legitimate discourse about that.
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