Congressional Republicans At Odds Over The Insurrection Being "Legitimate Political Discourse"

This morning, PunchBowl News published a couple of chilling scenes from Jeremy Peters' new book on January 6, Insurgency. I'll leave the one about Adam Kinzinger for another time and go straight to a desperate scene involved three far right sociopaths from Texas' congressional delegation. It features an alcoholic, pill-popping' nut case, Ronny Jackson, once an official White House physician, also a sexual predator.

The click, click, click of the House chamber doors sent Jackson into fight-or-flight mode. By chance, Jackson was sitting with two other freshman members of the Texas delegation who also had military training. Tony Gonzales, a Navy veteran, and Pat Fallon, a former Notre Dame wide receiver who served in the Air Force, were also Republicans. They were all now faced with wondering whether they would survive an attack from people they thought they were representing.

The three men grabbed whatever they could to fashion makeshift weapons. They broke legs off chairs to use as clubs and ripped the base off a hand sanitizer dispenser stand to wield as a baton. They picked up whatever furniture that wasn’t bolted down-- desks, cabinets, chairs-- and piled it up in front of the doors. The voices they could hear on the other side of those doors grew louder and louder. "This is our house!" a man outside shouted. Another intruder smashed a window, sending glass bits flying inside. Officers drew their guns and aimed them at the jagged holes where the glass had been punched out. Then the doors started buckling.

Jackson took off his necktie. If the mob did get inside, he told himself, it was best not to give them something to strangle you with. His mind flashed to a war zone in the Middle East. This should not be happening in Washington, D.C., he thought. Gonzales had a similarly disturbing thought: Wouldn’t this be something? I fight in Iraq and Afghanistan just to be killed in the House of Representatives.

Jackson objected to the certification of multiple states’ election results on Jan. 6. He attended Trump’s "Stop the Steal" rally on the Ellipse and tweeted this just hours before he found himself barricaded inside the House chamber with an angry mob gathered outside: "We’re out here FIGHTING FOR TRUMP and for our election integrity! American Patriots have your BACK Mr. President! We will FIGHT for YOU and we will fight for OUR country!! I’m #KAG"

#KAG is a fascist slogan that Trumpists use: Keep America Great. Mitch McConnell sees things a bit differently than Jackson, Fallon and Gonzales. Don't expect a #KAG bumpersticker on his car. Today Jonathan Weisman and Annie Karni reported that he termed the Trumpist attack on the Capitol not the "legitimate political discourse" the RNC termed it, but a "violent insurrection." Hold on; let me go check to see if Trump called him "the Old Crow" yet. OK, nothing yet; he's still attacking DirectTV.

McConnell still remembers: "We saw it happen. It was a violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after legitimately certified elections, from one administration to the next. That’s what it was."

As for the RNC, today he told reporters after the Republican senators' closed-door weekly lunch that "Traditionally, the view of the national party committees is that we support all members of our party, regardless of their positions of some issues. The issue is whether or not the RNC should be sort of singling out members of our party who have different views of the majority. That’s not the job of the RNC."

One of McConnell's most Trumpified junior senators, insurrectionist Josh Hawley, couldn't agree with McConnell less. He undercut him today by telling reporters that "Whatever you think about the RNC vote, it reflects the view of most Republican voters. In my state, it’s not helpful to have a bunch of D.C. Republicans commenting on the RNC."

QAnon psychopath Marjorie Traitor Greene (GA) is no fan of McConnell's either. Referencing the congressional far right's thoughts on Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), she blurted out that "People want them kicked out [but] it’d be really ridiculous to kick them out of the conference, but not work hard to make sure Liz Cheney is defeated."