Insurrection, D.C.

Students of American history will remember all the British loyalists who helped Thomas Jefferson draft the Declaration of Independence to make sure King George’s side of the story was told. Or the Tories who served as the disloyal opposition at the Constitutional Convention of 1787.

That would be alternative American history, of course, told by badly intoxicated students.

Yet Republicans in the House of Representatives somehow think it’s a perfectly sober suggestion that members who still staunchly support a leader who helped instigate the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol should now serve on a committee to investigate that attack on our democracy. They’re livid that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would bar them from the select committee they would doubtless attempt to turn into a circus and sabotage from the start.

The GOP has spent more than six months trying to rewrite the history Americans witnessed that day. Some have suggested, without a shred of evidence, that it was really left-wing “radicals” who fomented the violence. Others have opined that the rioters mostly acted like well-behaved tourists. All but a few have either bought into Donald Trump’s lie that he won the election or that, at the least, the vote was plagued by massive fraud, which Mr. Trump and his flunkies failed to prove in more than 60 court cases.

Let’s be clear: This was a violent insurrection, and Mr. Trump precipitated it. Even Senate Republican Leader Mitch Mcconnell acknowledged that in a blistering speech after voting to acquit Mr. Trump in an impeachment trial on convoluted technical grounds.

“There’s no question — none — that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day,” Mr. Mcconnell said. “The leader of the free world cannot spend weeks thundering that shadowy forces are stealing our country and then feign surprise when people believe him and do reckless things.”

Yet here’s House Minority Leader Kevin Mccarthy of California naming two of the ex-president’s top defenders, Reps. Jim Banks of Indiana and Jim Jordan of Ohio, to the select committee to investigate the riot. Both have echoed Mr. Trump’s false claims of a stolen election, voted against accepting President Joe Biden’s victory and have opposed efforts to investigate the insurrection. Mr. Banks espouses a diversionary “what-aboutism” by comparing the incident to Black Lives Matter protests, while Mr. Jordan was promoting Mr. Trump’s lies even as people were storming the Capitol.

Ms. Pelosi took the entirely sane step of refusing to allow Reps. Banks and Jordan on the committee, while accepting the other three Republican picks. But Mr. Mccarthy is now crying foul and refusing to have his conference participate at all.

Too bad, but par for the course in the hyperpartisan atmosphere Republicans have decided is the best way to keep their voter base agitated and stay in the good graces of Mr. Trump, who still commands substantial support in the party regardless of his relentless assault on our democracy.

No doubt if television, radio and the internet had existed back in the 1700s, a defeated, disgraced King George III and traitors like Benedict Arnold would fill the airwaves and Ye Olde Twitter with their alternative facts, of how the Redcoats really won the war, the votes to ratify the Constitution were rigged, and George Washington would be out of office by August. The one difference: They’d be doing it from far, far away, not daring to pull this kind of nonsense on American soil, much less in Congress.