Thread by @KaivanShroff

Democrats Face a False Choice over Jan. 6th Committee Republicans [THREAD]

Most Americans who follow the news will know that the latest additions to the January 6th Committee, Republicans @AdamKinzinger and @Liz_Cheney, both voted to impeach Donald Trump at his second impeachment.

Since the disgraced former president’s effort to overturn the 2020 election, both members of congress have been doing media rounds – casting themselves as stalwart defenders of democracy.

According to them, Trump crossed a line when he incited supporters to storm the Capitol in an effort to murder our political leaders.

What your average information consumer may not know, however, is that both Kinzinger and Cheney voted for Trump to win a second term in office in November, 2020, less than a year ago.

To state the obvious, Trump’s attempt to overthrow American democracy stemmed from the reality that he lost the election. Less apparent is whether, in the eyes of Republicans like Cheney & Kinzinger, the final straw was Trump’s insurrection incitement – 𝐨𝐫 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠.

After all, Reps. Cheney and Kinzinger were not concerned when then-candidate Trump invited Russia to hack our democratic election in 2016.

They were not concerned when 17 U.S. intelligence agencies confirmed that violation of our national sovereignty and then-president Trump weaponized the powers of the Executive to conceal those findings, including firing then-F.B.I. Director James Comey.

They were not concerned by Trump inciting violence against a free and fair press – a bulwark of American democracy.

And they explicitly endorsed his efforts to bully Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky into promoting debunked conspiracies about Joe Biden when they each voted against impeaching Trump the first time.

Kinzinger referred to the first impeachment as “a sad, divisive day for our nation” calling the articles of impeachment “weak,” despite clear evidence. Cheney went so far as to suggest the vote to impeach Trump would “damage our republic.”

As the saying goes, when someone votes not to impeach an anti-democratic conspiratorial president the first time – believe them.

Despite Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s ludicrous efforts to label Cheney and Kinzinger “Pelosi Republicans” – the facts show they are tried-and-true conservative Republicans – border wall and all.

This truth poses an apparent predicament for my fellow Democrats. The country has grown increasingly polarized, dividing along partisan lines. As such, any moment of bipartisanship achieves a politically powerful baseline presumption of reasonableness.

Moreover, having members of the opposing party make the same points or share the same facts as your own group has a uniquely effective conversion power to it. Behavioral economist Cass Sunstein calls such voices “surprising validators.”

“People tend to dismiss information that would falsify their convictions,” Sunstein explains, “But they may reconsider if the information comes from a source they cannot dismiss,” like a congress member from their own political party.

Cheney and Kinzinger serve this critical role regarding a domestic terrorist attack the rest of the Republican Party seeks to deny. That’s important.

Intuiting the value of Cheney and Kinzinger as surprising validators regarding the January 6th Committee, some Democrats are eager to fully embrace these two staunch Republicans.

Those of us who are more skeptical, viewing Cheney and Kinzinger’s sudden change-of-heart as a cynical political bet against Trumpism in the wake of his election loss, worry that glamorizing these two will distort their records, normalize them,

and position them for more power in the future.

But this is a false choice.

The power of surprising validators is that…they are surprising.

Regardless of their ultimately unfalsifiable motivations for doing so, it’s surprising that two right-wing members of congress who just voted for a second Trump term after his 4-year assault on our democracy now admit that he and his enablers are an urgent threat.

Democrats should embrace the nuance of wholeheartedly objecting to Cheney and Kinzinger for their complicity in creating the modern Republican Party, while simultaneously praising them for this one decent position.

As that juxtaposition is made more apparent, Democrats will maximize the benefit of the Committee’s hard-fought bipartisan nature. [END]