Jonathan Chait of New York thinks the GOP are slackers:
What makes Conaway’s lack of familiarity with the name “George Nader” especially troublesome is that Conaway is the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee and putatively running the lower chamber’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
If you’re getting the idea that maybe Conaway and his party aren’t utterly determined to uncover foul play between Moscow and Trump Tower, your suspicions are warranted. Conaway recently declared the investigation to be nearing its completion. “All investigations have a natural conclusion,” he explained. “As soon as we have everybody interviewed, we’ll start working on the report, we’ll get the report finalized, and we’ll move forward. Every investigation ought to have a conclusion, including this one. So we’re coming towards the end of it.”
Investigations, you see, have a “natural” conclusion. It is out of his hands. And so while Conaway’s committee has not forced the witnesses to answer questions Democrats believe they should answer, or even learned the names of major figures in the underlying investigation, there’s no arguing with nature. Anyway, it’s not like they’re investigating something like Benghazi, which took place in 2012 and was still being investigated four years later in a fruitless attempt to establish that the Obama administration deliberately lied.
Mr. Nader is the witness du jour for the Mueller team, according to reports. If Chait is right – and he has a good reputation – then the GOP is basically abdicating one of its most important responsibilities. This shouldn’t be a surprise, given what we’ve seen over the last year. But I just have to ask – what happens if the Democrats take the House after the mid-terms? Do they re-open the investigation and show how to do a proper investigation?
If so, the behavior of Chairman Nunes, Representative Conaway, and the rest of the GOP members of the House Intel Committee will become prime fodder for the 2020 elections, then, and might result in the burial of the GOP as a political party.
We’re seeing another reason to loathe and reject team politics – it’s turning out to be destructive to the Republican Party. That loyalty makes it impossible to do their job like adults. Let’s hope all the other political parties in America never go down that road.
