The new generation of “savvy” boys and girls of the beltway media are proving to be just as wedded to political establishment tropes as the previous generation. Here’s Brian Beutler on the astonishingly obtuse analysis of the January 6th Commission news of the last 24 hours:
Not to pick on this one piece, but it’s a good example of how Republican bad faith has become the background assumption in so much journalism, rather than a set of behaviors that can and should be questioned.
Like, Republicans could simply not try to do a coverup for partisan gain!
Here again the fact that Republicans are operating in bad faith is presented as a feature of the landscape, not political conduct in its own right.
It would be straightforward to present this same set of facts in the scandalous light it deserves—the GOP angling to cover up the truth about the insurrection. Instead, Republican bad acting is accepted as a given, and the story reduced to “will it work though?”
Republicans seeking a pretext to sabotage negotiations everyone anticipated they would sabotage is just how things work, as far as much of the mainstream press is concerned. Not dishonest conduct that deserves direct scrutiny.
Another instance of GOP bad faith basically rewiring journo brains. Of course Biden didn’t cause the chip shortage. They just anticipate Republicans will pretend it’s his fault anyhow and frame it as a challenge for him, not as a story about the dishonesty of his opponents.
Baking the presumption of GOP bad faith into everything, rather than treating it as a series of choices by human agents, creates a kind of impunity (through exhaustion or savviness or whatever else) where it isn’t even worth pressing them on their conduct.
The bad-faith GOP strategy of threatening to tank the economy while Dems are in charge, based on pretexts Republicans plainly don’t believe, and even though the Dems don’t engage in the same kind of nihilism, is just presumed and unexamined (and, of course a problem for Dems).
Isn’t the problem here that they’re threatening to sabotage the economy based on lies? Seems worse, idk,
Republican bad faith (in naming pro-insurrection members to sabotage the committee) is just a feature of the landscape; Pelosi intervening to prevent the sabotage is a move by an actor with agency, and subject to scrutiny.
Every reporter understands what happened when you interrogate it:
Why did McCarthy pick Jordan and Banks? To turn the committee into a circus, to protect the party and Trump.
Why did Pelosi reject Jordan and Banks? To prevent that from happening.
Nobody is confused about it.
But the first half of the equation must be presumed, an unalterable feature of the landscape. Otherwise reporters must confront thorny questions like: why do Republicans keep showing contempt for honesty, consistency, truth, fair play, etc?
Having baked in the bad faith—Of COURSE McCarthy appointed saboteurs, how could it ever be otherwise? Of COURSE he’s looking for an excuse to back out, pretend investigating insurrection is partisan!—the only person whose decisions become worth a closer look is Pelosi.
All reporters know this; they just can’t make themselves treat Republican conduct as a series of decisions that merit scrutiny.
This speaks for itself.
They all know Cheney’s on the committee, that Republicans killed the bipartisan commission and that their attacks on the committee’s findings are pretextual. They can’t make that the basis of their reporting because it’d mean placing GOP bad-faith dealing under scrutiny.
Democracy dies in derpness.
Again, they know Cheney is on the committee, that McCarthy picked Jordan and Banks to sabotage it, and Pelosi nixed them to prevent said sabotage. They’d rather print disinformation—‘bipartisan probe falls apart’—than treat GOP conduct as a series of choices to be questioned.
The headline could be Republicans Withdraw From Insurrection Committee; Bipartisan Investigation Will Proceed With Democrats, Cheney
But that’d require tackling questions like “why are Republicans behaving in this way?” rather than treating their dirty dealing as a constant.
It’s wild because one of the most incredible stories in U.S. history is right there for the plucking—an organized mob of the president’s supporters attacked the Capitol and his party is trying to cover up the connections between the two.
But when you internalize and accept that party’s corruption—what else would you expect them to do?—it stops seeming like a scandal and frees you from having to confront how aberrant the behavior is.
If I were feeling churlish I’d note that this is why you don’t strive for bipartisanship as a goal in and of itself; it gives bad actors the power to make you fail on your own terms. But nah, this is a media failure first and foremost.
Originally tweeted by Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler) on June 29, 2021.
This re-emergence of lazy Village CW has me more despairing than I’ve been in quite a while. If this keeps up, Donald Trump or one of his mini-mes could easily win back the government and I just don’t know what will happen.
It’s as Josh Marshall says, “DC is wired for the GOP” and the problem is that the modern GOP is neo-fascist. Apparently, these people don’t realize that the David Broder years brought us here. Or, they don’t care.