They Want To Own It, So Make Them Own It

 In a move that should surprise exactly no one, Trump is beginning to valorize the 1/6 Insurrectionists. As Josh Marshall notes in the piece, that Trump would try to elevate the violent fringe who attacked the Capitol in his name was inevitable. That a movement that turned Randy Weaver and David Koresh into martyrs would do the same for Ashli Babbitt is also unsurprising. 

I know that Biden and Democrats want to run on a strong economy and the end of the pandemic in 2022. Fine, you can run on that as your positive message. One reason Republicans didn't want any part of a 1/6 Commission is that they were worried Democrats were going to turn it into an endless "Benghazi" style witch hunt that would release findings leading up to the 2022 midterms. 

Since they have refused - for the most part - to participate in the hearings and because they are actively embracing the insurrection in order to kiss Trump's immense, puckered ass...OK, make it work for you.

Kevin McCarthy is on tape bragging that the Benghazi hearings help destroy Hillary Clinton's approval ratings (which were actually quite high when she was Secretary of State). Maybe it did work or maybe it was just the dynamic where women are popular doing the work by unpopular when they ask for a promotion. We prize women's competence and condemn their ambition. Or maybe it really was the relentlessness of the Benghazi hearings. 

If so, repeatedly and consistently tying the insurrection around Trump, McCarthy and the (disturbingly large) lunatic fringe in Congress could be exactly the sort of anchor around the GOP in 2022 that could win enough Senate seats to neuter Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema. In February - when she was just beginning to really ramp up the crazy - Marjorie Traitor Greene had a national approval rating of 15% favorable and 37% unfavorable. If anything, those numbers should have expanded as she and the other mini-Trumps in the House expose themselves for the adulation of the OANN/Newsmax crowd. 

Pay no attention to their rising popularity among Republicans. The goal of the next four years must be to make fewer Republicans. If they've already drunk the Kool Aid, there's no saving them. All we can do is peel away Republican-leaning independents into true independents and make true independents into Democratic-leaners.

That should be the goal and the Insurrection should be the lever to move the populace.