Jims Jordan and Banks, comedians

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi vetoed two of minority leader McCarthy's nominations to the select committee investigating the January 6th insurrection yesterday.  As apparently "shocking" as this was, it was completely predictable. First, McCarthy has made it clear that he is completely beholden to Trump.  So anyone who might be even mildly non-partisan was not a contender for the Republication slots on the committee.  

Jim Jordan had made it clear from his Emmy-nomination-worthy theatrical performance on the Benghazi hearings during the House's "investigation"  into Hilary Clinton's emails that he was not remotely interested in fact-finding, but sees committees as opportunities for partisan grandstanding. He'd also been instrumental in promoting the Big Lie and was involved in the organization of the insurrection, allegedly.  

Jim Banks had also made clear from his comments this week that like Jordan, he was intending to use the committee as a platform to peddle a revisionist version of events. “Make no mistake, Nancy Pelosi created this committee solely to malign conservatives and to justify the left’s authoritarian agenda. I will not allow this committee to be turned into a forum for condemning millions of Americans because of their political beliefs.”  Hardly a voice of a serious open-minded thinker. 

So the two Jims' rejection was entirely to be expected. And equally predictably, McCarthy announced the the Republicans would do an "investigation" of their own, obviously an attempt to preempt the select committee with its own distorted version of events. We'll have two documents, one saying Trump was to blame and the other saying it was Hilary, George Soros, BLM, Antifa, and, of course, the Jews.

Indeed, one might have imagined that this was precisely what McCarthy had intended from the get-go were it not for the fact that he was apparently taken off guard by Pelosi's decision, all of which only seems to show how McCarthy, like many of his Republican colleagues, misread his political opponents and Nancy Pelosi in particular.