It’s hard to pick the most grating member of the January 6th committee. I think for pure hysterical unseriousness, you’d have to go with Adam Kinzinger. He’s so bad that even the other members rarely acknowledge his existence publicly. Of course, Liz Cheney is in the discussion, though she manages to be a bit more cunning in her dissolution of all the principles she claims to hold dear.
But as far as the Democrats on the committee go, the choice is easy: Jamie Raskin takes the cake.
Raskin obviously learned from Adam Schiff’s behavior during the facial and wasted effort of the Robert Mueller investigation. He’s spent the last year and a half promising bombshell after bombshell that he and his cohorts never deliver. All the while, he carries himself with a sense of unearned moral superiority that is made all the more ridiculous by his own past.
You see, Raskin objected to the certification of the 2016 election in an attempt to stop Donald Trump from assuming power. He’s never once apologized for or reframed his efforts. Instead, he’s acted as if they simply never happened, and certainly, the news media has shown zero interest in pressing him on the matter.
All the while, even some on the right have tried to assert that Raskin’s actions were different. You see, he didn’t “deny” the election, they say. He simply objected on procedural grounds with no actual thought of overturning the results.
That’s what makes a newly unearthed clip from 2003 brought forth by the RNC so damning. It’s not just about his actions, which he would later take in 2016, but it’s a window into his intent over a decade prior.
Raskin’s language in the clip isn’t ambiguous. He outright accuses the 2000 election of being stolen, an allegation he now maintains is the gravest of sins. “Election denial” has become a phrase du jour on the left, and it’s been one the January 6th committee has used repeatedly to describe a segment of people they openly disdain and want to punish. Yet, here’s one of the committee’s top members claiming a presidential election was stolen, with George being a “court-appointed president.”
He goes further, though, delving into the false conspiracy theory that all the votes weren’t counted in Florida. The votes were counted multiple times in Florida following the 2000 election. Gore saw fit to try to force recounts until he won, and the courts finally said enough.
How do you square that with Raskin’s current proclamations and grandstanding? The answer is that you can’t square it, though he won’t be asked to do so. Instead, Raskin will continue to pretend he’s somehow better than those who have questions about the 2020 election despite his past claims that each of the last two Republican presidents cheated their way into the White House.
The point is this. Everything these people claim their enemies are, they actually are. Hypocrisy undergirds the January 6th committee and the Democratic Party. Raskin and others started the trend of denying election results before any Republican ever even entertained the idea. That continual tearing down of our system grew over decades into the skepticism we now spread across the political spectrum. It didn’t have to be that way, but the lack of accountability, and the attempts to rewrite history, have only caused more doubts.