Michelle Cottle | Jan. 6 Committee Hearing: Heroes and Villains – The New York Times

By Michelle Cottle

Ms. Cottle is a member of the editorial board.

“It turns out that not even Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka bought into the former president’s toxic fantasies about the 2020 election having been stolen from him. She came to understand pretty quickly after the election that there was no evidence of a plot by Democrats, accepting the assessment of Bill Barr, Mr. Trump’s attorney general at the time, that the game had not been rigged. Mr. Trump had lost, and all the wild claims to the contrary, as Mr. Barr says he told Mr. Trump, were “bullshit.”

Snippets from Ms. Trump’s and Mr. Barr’s recorded testimonies were among the many engrossing bits of evidence to emerge Thursday evening during the Jan. 6 House committee’s first public hearing. The grainy video clips somehow fit the somber mood of the proceedings and fueled the sense that dark dealings were at last coming to the light for inspection by the American people.

It is a heavy lift to get people to pay attention to a story that they think they already know — and that many have grown exhausted hearing about. And Democrats, bless their hearts, are often lousy storytellers, too focused on dry data or policy rhetoric or high-minded ideological ideals to weave a strong narrative or make a gut-level connection.

But in their opening argument to the American people, the Democrat-dominated Jan. 6 committee presented a story that was both informative and resonant — by turns heartbreaking, hair-raising and infuriating. Fact by fact, clip by clip, the committee laid out the contours of its case that the president of the United States spearheaded a monthslong, multifaceted effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election, culminating in the violent attack on the Capitol. More details will come in later hearings. But the committee’s Republican vice chairwoman, Liz Cheney, captured the crux of the story in her opening remarks: “President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack.”

Michelle Cottle | Biden Underpromises, Overdelivers – The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/27/opinion/biden-100-days.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

By Michelle Cottle

Ms. Cottle is a member of the editorial board.

“Like any employee, President Biden has to suffer through periodic performance reviews. Thursday marks his 100th day in office — a time-honored if vaguely arbitrary milestone at which a president’s early moves are sliced, diced and spun for all the world to judge. How many bills has he gotten passed? Whom has he appointed? How many executive orders has he signed? Which promises has he broken? Which constituencies has he ticked off?

Mr. Biden took office under extraordinary circumstances, with the nation confronting what he has called a quartet of “converging crises”: a lethal pandemic, economic uncertainty, climate change and racial injustice. Bold policy action was needed. So, too, was an effort to neutralize the toxic politics of the Trump era — which, among other damage, spawned a large reality-free zone in which the bulk of Republicans buy the lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

All of which feels like a lot for one mild-mannered 78-year-old to tackle in his first three or so months. Then again, Mr. Biden is built to keep chugging along in the face of adversity, tragedy and lousy odds. That’s how he rolls. And while his first 100 days have been far from flawless, they reflect a clear understanding of why he was elected and what the American people now expect of him.

The president moved fast and went big on his signature challenge: confronting the one-two public-health-and-economic punch of the pandemic. He asked Congress for a $1.9 trillion relief package, and Congress basically gave him a $1.9 trillion relief package. Did Republican lawmakers sign on? No, they did not. But the ambitious bill — which went so far as to establish a (temporary) guaranteed income for families with children — drew strong bipartisan support from the public. That was good enough for the White House.  . . . “

Michelle Cottle | Mitch McConnell Doesn’t Get to Define ‘Bipartisan’ – The New York Times

“. . .  In recent years, for instance, there has been strong bipartisan support for modest gun control measures such as expanded background checks and red-flag laws, but Mr. McConnell’s Senate never got around to making those happen. Neither have lawmakers provided legislative relief to Dreamers, immigrants brought illegally to the United States as children, despite bipartisan public support for providing legal status and a path to citizenship.

Last August, the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy issued a report, based on a survey of more than 80,000 Americans, enumerating nearly 150 issues on which majorities of Democrats and Republicans agree. These range from raising the eligibility age for Social Security to creating a national registry for police misconduct, and from strengthening campaign finance laws to imposing congressional term limits.

As for Mr. Biden’s relief plan, currently awaiting congressional action: 76 percent of Americans, including 60 percent of Republicans, support it, according to a Morning Consult poll out Wednesday.

Going forward, Mr. Biden should think, and talk, about bipartisanship as it relates to the American public — not whether a few tribal warriors in Congress can be coaxed into crossing party lines. His team has explicitly nodded in this direction now and again. “Even with narrow majorities in Congress, he has the opportunity to build broad bipartisan support for his program — not necessarily in Congress but with the American people,” his adviser Anita Dunn told CNN in January, regarding Covid relief.

This should be the standard party line. If, say, 70 percent of the electorate supports a policy, including a majority of Republicans, it is bipartisan — regardless of what McConnell & Company think of it. By hammering home this more expansive definition, Mr. Biden can start nudging people — maybe even lawmakers — to think more in terms of a policy’s widespread appeal than about what the loudest voices on either side are demanding.

This would be a step toward making government work better for everyone. Except maybe Mr. McConnell.”      -30-

Michelle Cottle | Marjorie Taylor Greene Apologized and Got a Standing Ovation. Seriously. – The New York Times

“The House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, issued a plaintive plea to his troops on Wednesday: Can’t we all just get along?

Congressional Republicans had two delicate items on their midweek to-do list involving the possible punishment of their own members:

1. Vote on whether to oust from leadership Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the chamber’s No. 3 Republican, over her vote to impeach Donald Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol siege. “There has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution,” Ms. Cheney had asserted on the eve of impeachment, provoking wrath among Trump loyalists.

2. Decide whether to strip committee assignments from Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the conspiracy theory-embracing, race-baiting freshman from Georgia, who, pre-Congress, spent her time on social media indulging right-wing rants about killing prominent Democratic officials and agents of the so-called deep state.

In the matter of Ms. Cheney, Republicans declined to bow to their Trumpian cultists. During a conference meeting in the bowels of the Capitol Wednesday, Ms. Cheney refused to apologize for backing impeachment, even when members of the Freedom Caucus accused her of “aiding the enemy.” After some four hours of debate, the conference voted decisively, 145 to 61, to keep her as its chairwoman. That the balloting was secret enabled some of the more spinally challenged members to vote their conscience.

Kevin McCarthy.Credit…J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press

With Ms. Greene, the party’s fringe carried the day. Mr. McCarthy issued a statement assuring the public that the poison conspiracy theories she had peddled “do not represent the values or beliefs of the House Republican Conference.” And Ms. Greene apologized to colleagues for some of her battier statements and for putting the conference in a tough political spot. For this, she received a standing ovation.

In the end, Republicans refused to take any concrete action against her. They instead left it to the full House to vote Thursday on a resolution put forward by Democrats to remove Ms. Greene from two committees. The House voted 230 to 199 to do so, with 11 Republicans voting with Democrats.

This dodge allowed Mr. McCarthy to denounce the move as a “partisan power grab” by Democrats, while he and others hawk the usual slippery-slope gibberish. If they come for Ms. Greene today, they warn, what’s to stop them for coming for other Republicans tomorrow?

On the surface, these moves — or lack thereof — appear to pull in different directions. But they have the shared aim of preserving the fraying ties between the party’s angry, Trumpist base and its more traditional wing. “We need to unite for us to take the majority and govern,” Mr. McCarthy reportedly urged in defending Ms. Cheney.” . . .

“Deliberation is a wonderful thing. But among the pile of already established facts are videos of Ms. Greene holding forth on some of the most unhinged fictions percolating on the internet. In her social media postings, she has even endorsed the “frazzledrip” conspiracy theory. Warning: Do not Google that one if you have a weak stomach.”

I dared to google, What is the frazzledrip conspiracy, and I wish I hadn’t. It is real story about an insidious lie, that investigators found a video on Anthony Weiner’s laptop of a girl being mutilated. From the U.S. Sun, a British tabloid?:

“The fake report claimed that the video allegedly shows Hillary Clinton and her former aide Huma Abedin, Weiner’s ex-wife, raping and mutilating a young girl.

At the end of the so-called video, the girl bleeds out before Clinton and Abedin drink the blood during a Satanic ritual sacrifice.

Hundreds of YouTube videos, each with thousands of views, are dedicated to the violent and untrue conspiracy theory, according to Vox.”

To repeat, there is no such video, and the people who pass on such stories, like Marjory Taylor Green, now in congress, are sick and dangerous. She apologized profusely, and her GOP colleagues gave her a standing ovation?