I spent part of Thursday afternoon watching the January 6th hearings. One of the pundits on PBS felt that it was a bad move on the committee’s part to subpoena the genius, because-guess what- the Trumpers will criticize them. I think it may work out well in some ways, though I doubt that Trump will ever testify.
If I understand the procedure correctly, the next step will be a vote in the House about whether to hold Trump in contempt. I assume that the vote can be scheduled prior to the election. If not, the subpoena becomes a bit of empty theater. If a vote can be scheduled, it puts some, though not all, of the Republicans in Congress in a difficult position. If they vote against the contempt citation, they risk alienating the ever shrinking pool of rational people (well, somewhat rational) who have still not faced the reality that the Republican Party has completely gone over to the dark side. Voting for a finding of contempt risks pissing off the nutjobs without whom they can’t win anywhere.
My guess is that the committee members, even the two Republicans (both of whom will soon be ex-Congresspersons) have something along those lines in mind. They’d all like the committee to continue in existence, which means they all (though Kinzinger and Cheney can’t say this out loud) would like to see the Dems keep control of Congress.
Here in my state senatorial district we have a Republican incumbent senator who is so afraid of speaking about national issues that she refused to debate and talked the sponsoring chamber of commerce into blackballing any questions (which were all pre-screened) about national issues. I think she’s symptomatic of what a lot of Republican politicians would like to do: avoid talking about stuff like voter suppression and insurrectionists while throwing red meat to the insurrectionists while nobody is looking.
If there is a vote before Election Day I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of the Republicans find a reason not to cast a vote at all. Quite likely they’ll settle on some sort of talking point like “the subpoena is just the Democrats playing politics”. I’m sure Fox has already come up with something.
I could be wrong about this, that’s for sure. It may very well be that the Republicans will be loud and proud about backing the crime boss that is now their leader. And it could be that a majority of people in this country are too (is stupid the right word?) to see where the Republicans are taking us.
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