On Friday's PBS NewsHour, anchor Judy Woodruff finished the week-in-review segment by asking Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart and New York Times columnist David Brooks about the Democrats creating a select committee on the January 6 Capitol riot. Capehart took out a bucket of rhetorical sugar, insisting Speaker Nancy Pelosi is not just a "devout Catholic," but a devoted constitutionalist.
CAPEHART: Well, I do think we will learn a lot. But the key thing that everyone one should keep in mind is that, for Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is a deeply faithful person, devout Catholic, her love of the Constitution ranks up there as number two in terms of her — what she strongly believes in.
And for her, as a member of Congress representing a district in California, as a constitutional officer, as speaker of the House, for her, her allegiance an oath to the Constitution is inviolable. And the fact that people stormed the Capitol on a really sacred, sacred day and sacred process for American democracy, certifying the election, it was an affront to her as an American and an affront to her as the speaker of the House.
It was an important process, but now it's partisan. The party-line vote proves it. Capehart insisted "anyone who thinks that this is only a partisan exercise doesn't really understand who she is and why she is doing it." The liberals are always idealists first and partisans somewhere down the list!
David Brooks offered his tribute to "really tough" Liz Cheney, giving her the you-go-girl treatment:
BROOKS: Liz Cheney has a really tough person. To go against her own leader and to accept this appointment from Nancy Pelosi, that shows she's just very tough. And she has decided that her — it's her oath to defend the Constitution, to look into that what happened on January 6. And more power to her.
As to what the Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, does, I'm intrigued. Does he go — I assume he will staff his side of the committee, because, otherwise, the Republicans will be silenced. Does he go and get super hard-charging, fire-breathing right-wingers who will make Fox happy and sort of disrupt the whole works -- what Elise Stefanik has become -- or does he go with people who actually voted to certify the Biden election? I imagine he will go with the hard-chargers, and we will get something of a political theater.
Even so, Brooks said "I do think we will learn stuff, just from witnesses, just from the back-and-forth of politics." Part of that political back-and-forth is the liberal media gorging on the story. If there's partisan advantage to be gained, the liberal media will be eagerly seeking it.
