Photo via grothman.house.gov
Glenn Grothmann
Glenn Grothmann
By now many Americans realize the rightwing MAGA Republicans controlling the House of Representatives have no intention of passing any legislation to deal with the nation’s problems over the next two years.
Instead, Kevin McCarthy’s House will do everything possible to try to wreck President Biden’s first two years of continuing economic growth and six straight months of declining inflation. Instead of contributing to that economic success, the House can’t wait to launch multiple investigations into imaginary scandals that aren’t being committed by the Biden administration.
Here’s the most embarrassing part for Wisconsin. Three of the state’s most extreme MAGA Republican congressmen—Glenn Grothman, Scott Fitzgerald and Tom Tiffany—have been appointed by McCarthy to play central roles in those fraudulent investigations.
Fitzgerald and Tiffany were the state’s only two House members among 139 House Republicans who voted after the January 6 Capitol insurrection not to certify the 31 electoral votes Biden won in Arizona and Pennsylvania to try to overthrow Biden’s election. Those two also were ready to disenfranchise Wisconsin’s voters by throwing out Biden’s victory in their home state, but Sen. Ron Johnson withdrew his support after the insurrection so there was never any vote.
GOP Saboteurs
Fitzgerald and Tiffany are members of the House Judiciary Committee chaired by congressional attack dog Jim Jordan. Jordan was so eager to sabotage Biden’s presidency with inflammatory investigations he turned down support from 20 anti-McCarthy Republicans to become House Speaker.
Jordan’s a full-time Republican saboteur. Nancy Pelosi refused McCarthy’s attempt to appoint Jordan to the House Committee investigating January 6because of Jordan’s support for the insurrectionists. That’s why McCarthy Republicans boycotted the investigation.
But now Jordan’s investigations will compete for public attention with equally aggressive investigations by the House Oversight Committee that includes Grothman. A White House spokesman described the oversight committee as “the most extreme MAGA members of the Republican caucus who promote violent rhetoric and dangerous conspiracy theories.”
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Other fringe Republicans on that committee include Jordan, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar, Lauren Boebert and Scott Perry. Federal prosecutors seized Perry’s cellphone in their January 6 investigation with a warrant indicating probable cause it contained evidence of criminal activity in the insurrection.
Rightwing Extremism
Grothman isn’t as well-known nationally for his radical views as his notorious colleagues, but Congresswoman Stacey Plaskett, the at-large representative of the U.S. Virgin Islands, called him out in House debate for racially attacking Black Lives Matter as “a group that doesn’t like the old-fashioned family.”
“How dare you say . . . Black people do not understand old-fashioned families?” Plaskett responded, “We have been able to keep our families alive for over 400 years and the assault to our families to not have Black lives or not even have Black families.”
Grothman’s rightwing extremism on race and other issues were often an embarrassment in Wisconsin during his 20-year career in the state legislature. Now he has an opportunity to become a nationally televised embarrassment.
But here’s what rightwing House Republicans have completely wrong about congressional investigations. Nobody but the most hateful partisan Republicans really care about how much partisan Republicans hate Biden and the Democrats.
Attack on Democracy
The reason why Americans were riveted for weeks by the televised public hearings of the bipartisan House Committee investigating January 6 was the subject matter—the most violent attack on American democracy in our lifetimes.
Not only that, but new evidence was presented in a surprisingly non-partisan way. Many of the witnesses were Republicans. They included White House advisors and staff members testifying to behind-the-scenes actions and planning by the president and those around him. Others were victims of the mob violence including police who were among more than 140 sustaining permanent injuries and brain damage from savage beatings while others died.
It’s difficult to imagine the Republican House crazies who held McCarthy hostage for four days putting on hearings to publicly rave about Hunter Biden’s laptop will have anywhere near the same political impact.
Here’s a revelation for House Republicans. The public really doesn’t care about congressional hearings that don’t affect their own lives. The Jan. 6 investigation was a good TV show because it was about an almost unbelievable crime against America we’d all witnessed on television.
The media will overcover the first House investigation attacking Biden to prove they’re non-partisan. They did that when Biden’s attorneys discovered classified documents among old papers and returned them to the government even though it wasn’t the same as Trump stealing hundreds of classified documents, lying about them and refusing to give them back.
But when the hearing turns out to be a pack of politicians giving speeches about how much they hate Democrats, television coverage will drift away and so will the attention of the American people. Voters want politicians to do something about the problems they’re facing today and stop whining about Biden beating them two years ago.
