Democrats Are Not Cowards, So Why Are Liberals Repeating GOP Smears?

In the past 20 years, the House Democrats have approved more criminal contempt referrals than their Republican counterparts. Why the hate?

Lincoln Project founder Rick Wilson

by Bob Cesca

WASHINGTON, DC -- Yes, sometimes the congressional Democrats need to be thwacked in the ass to get them revved up. But they’re no different than any other roster of politicians from any party. Undeniably, one of the animating concepts driving representative democracy involves pushing our leaders to do what we ask.

Last week, NeverTrumper and Lincoln Project strategist Rick Wilson posted a series of tweets describing how he possessed inside information leading him to conclude that the House select-committee investigating the January 6th invasion of Congress was dead on the vine, and that the Democratic majority on the panel was too “gutless” to pursue criminal contempt charges against subpoena-shirkers Steve Bannon, Mark Meadows, Kash Patel, and Dan Scavino. 

A short time later, both Liz Cheney and the committee’s Twitter account wrote that Wilson’s tweets were “not true” and “nonsense,” and that the committee was absolutely considering contempt of Congress referrals, especially against Bannon. Wilson’s alleged sources were wrong, but that didn’t stop him from pulling one of the oldest tricks in the book: Wilson claimed victory, behaving as though his pushing is what triggered the committee to take action. In other words, if he had been right, he could claim victory. If he had been wrong, which he was, he could also claim victory. Which he did. Slick.

The thing that made me lose my mind was all the liberals who retweeted Wilson while repeating the decades-long trope about Democrats being weak and impotent in the face of a challenge from the other side.