After the Republican National Committee accused the Jan. 6 committee of engaging in “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse,” much of the party felt compelled to take sides, either endorsing or criticizing the mess the RNC created. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell seemed eager to weigh in during a Capitol Hill press conference on Tuesday.
“We all were here; we saw what happened,” the Kentucky Republican told reporters, referring to the attack on the Capitol. “It was a violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after a legitimately certified election, from one administration to the next. That’s what it was.”
McConnell — by most measures, the most powerful GOP official in Washington, D.C. — perhaps thought he could help end the larger intra-party conversation. The senator was effectively laying down the law: The rioters were not engaged in “legitimate political discourse,” and there’s no point in having Republicans continue to argue with one another about this.
So, time to move on? Not according to McConnell’s critics within his own party.
Donald Trump, right on cue, lashed out at the Senate minority leader again, whining that McConnell didn’t try to help him overturn the 2020 results. (In the same statement, the former president questioned the Biden administration’s competence while misspelling “incompetence.”)
But more interesting was the criticism McConnell received from one of his own members. The Washington Post reported:
[Texas Sen. Ted] Cruz said Wednesday that it was a “serious mistake” for McConnell to have called the Jan. 6 attack a “violent insurrection,” and he acknowledged frequent disagreements with the longtime leader.
In fact, the Texas Republican seemed quite animated on this point, arguing, “The word ‘insurrection’ is politically charged propaganda.” He went on to complain that McConnell was effectively endorsing “the political propaganda of Democrats and the corporate media.”
Right off the bat, let’s note that Cruz didn’t accuse McConnell of being wrong, he accused the minority leader of using words the far-right prefers not to hear. It’s a reminder of just how weird conservative political correctness can be.
What’s more, it’s amazing to see Republicans voluntarily extend their intra-party dispute yet another day. The RNC got the ball rolling on Friday, and nearly a week later, leading Republican voices are still going after one another about how best to characterize an attack on their own country’s Capitol. Democrats occasionally look for ways to divide their GOP rivals, but it’s unusual to see Republicans choose to divide themselves like this. But even if we put all of that aside, what made Cruz’s complaints yesterday especially notable is his own record: The Texas Republican spent a year repeatedly describing the Jan. 6 assault as a “terrorist attack.” Then the right and conservative media decided they disapproved of Cruz’s word choice, at which point he groveled and begged Fox News for forgiveness. It now appears the senator is still desperate to make amends, no matter how pitiful it makes him appear. As MSNBC’s Chris Hayes added on his show last night, “Today, [Cruz] is, of course, out attacking Mitch McConnell, which is the point of all of this conditioning that those folks are up to — hoping Trump or Tucker’s watching, and will tell him that he’s a good boy.”
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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