In a way, the lack of Republican cooperation with the January 6 committee was a blessing. When Democrats first moved to launch an investigation into the insurrection, Mitch McConnell and his fellow Senate Republicans wouldn’t allow a bicameral committee. Then House Republicans boycotted taking part in the investigation, refusing to let it be a bipartisan one. Ultimately, only two Republicans joined on the nine-member panel. In the end, the only elected Republican who spoke during the opening evening of the January 6 committee’s hearings on Thursday night was Liz Cheyney, of Wyoming.
But the largely one-party nature of the committee has its advantages: the absence of Republicans also means the absence of obstruction. The result was something very different from what Americans are used to seeing from congressional hearings: a substantive, honest and thorough accounting of an event of massive civic urgency. While most congressional hearings are a showboating circus, with different members attempting to obfuscate the issues at hand, derail the proceedings with non-sequiturs, or cultivate clips that can be played in their next campaign ad, the January 6 hearing, by contrast, was a lucid, methodical, disciplined and well-choreographed presentation of the investigation’s findings.
