A dancing banana, your argument is invalid

https://www.axios.com/republicans-biden-probes-house-majority-25bc5f7a-269e-44c8-94dc-4700574112ca.html

As I was saying 15 pages earlier, the GOP is going to retaliate tit-for-tat for every escalatory measure by the democrats. As democrats weaponize inquiries more than benghazi, strip committee seats while butthurt over asinine complaints, etc, the Republicans already have ample fodder to work with and are very open and blunt about their plans to repay in kind. Inquiries into the origins of covid, the CDC response and what Fauci has said, inquiries into Hunter Biden and the ukraine money trail, inquiries into the Afghanistan withdrawal, inquiries into the IRS leaks, inquiries into Merrick Garland's parent-terror memo, etc etc

Republicans already weaponize everything far more than democrats. Dems have very little to lose by playing the game back. Republicans have already been categorically unwilling to vote for anything when democrats are in office for literally my entire adult life and are willing to abuse investigations.

This post was edited by NetflixAdaptationWidow on Dec 19 2021 08:33am

Wait, so your saying they are corrupt liars?

Democrats and Republicans have both held their significant policy votes on party lines for all modern political history, you act as if that's escalatory when that's been a constant for your entire lifetime. Obamacare was written behind closed doors and the actual (not fake public-facing track) bill was put to a party line vote by legislators who never read a word of it. And when Republicans voted for tax cuts under Trump, they did the same thing except without the pretense. So when Joe Manchin came out this morning and officially declared the BBB dead, you don't get to act as if that horrible awful no-good how can it possibly happen 50/50 R + 1/50 D stonewall is something unprecedented.
What is an escalation are the measures the democrats have taken to weaponize the various powers of the house and senate to persecute political rivals. Stripping committee seats, impeaching a president twice without any crime- even after he's out of office, censure votes, subpoenaing journalists, trying to breach executive privilege and prosecute those who refuse, etc etc. These are all very wild, unprecedented actions. Even congress during the leadup to the civil war era wasn't as willing to abuse formal powers when they could just informally beat the shit out of someone with a stick.

There's a huge difference between blustering away and blasting away. Benghazi, muh emails, Trump's jibes, Republican rancor- it was in pretty much every case just blowing wind. What formal powers were invoked to any effect? Did Trump ever send storm troopers to literally break down the door of a NYT journalist's private residence with a battering ram in the middle of the night, handcuff him and steal his confidential source list and leak it to fox news? No, he went on twitter and shitposted. Words with no effect. The limits of Republican escalatory measures have usually been tit-for-tat responses to equivalent Democrat escalations. Harry Reid went nuclear, so McConnell went nuclear. He warned them at the time, he did exactly what he said he'd do, it turned out just like he predicted. Franken (lol) broke the blue slip courtesy by declaring a filibuster, McConnell declared he'd roll over that specific tactic and allow normal usage. Narrowly tailored reciprocation.

The escalations are actions, not words. And that's what Republicans are going to respond to in kind. And since Democrats have a 101+/-1% chance to lose the house next year, we're going to see weaponized investigations, vindictive persecution of the opponents and maybe even trying to lock up some liberals under contempt charges. I bet they'll vote to impeach Biden before his first term is up.

Good to know R’s are at least putting up a fight now.

need a Russian Collusion Lie investigation committee ASAP

I'm trying to recall just how many things are worth investigating out of that shitstorm alone
The Le Carre LARP by Comey & McCabe
The unmasking and leaking
The other almost daily leaks to the NYT/WaPo
Mueller's bogus prosecution of Russians (remember Concord calling his bluff and showing up to court?)
Every time Adam Schiff lied to the public (aka opened his mouth)


Look at something like Mueller's outcomes. Even if you hate Trump, its clearly not a good look for our country when Mueller's lawyers tried to file charges against Russian entities in a theory that clearly violated the 1st amendment and half the rest of the constitution, then when they showed up to court, employed clearly fraudulent and abusive tactics in court like 'dump 4 terabytes of untranslated social media posts into the evidence docket to spam them to death' until they finally relented and dropped the charges to avoid substantive discovery. It proves beyond any doubt that Mueller was posturing for political purposes and willing to corrupt the enforcement of the law to do so. Even if you hold some jingoistic desire to punish Russia, disregard our civil liberties and buy into the conspiracy theories beyond the facts of the tit-for-tat plays, even then, its still obviously a bad outcome for Mueller to stake out a bluff that the Russians instantly called to embarrass us all. And that's a mistake that should be investigated and get a proper post-mortem.

GOP can't get shittier than they are at baseline. Empty threat is empty.

We just had 4 years of republicans in charge and with access to even more tools as their disposal than democrats have right now and they not only neglected to weaponize them, but made it policy even at their expense. As the opposition party in 2022 they're going to be itching to wield the senate as a bludgeon, and if they get the house, well impeachment is guaranteed. All these powers the democrats are wielding right now were available to Republicans who didn't similarly abuse them, but will be available to Republicans again in short order, and they are openly declaring their intention to start wielding them. Was it an empty threat when McConnell told Harry Reid that he'd regret going nuclear? Ask Gorsuch and Kavanaugh