IT DOESN'T LOOK LIKE A REPUBLICAN MISCALCULATION TO ME

Chris Cillizza thinks the GOP should have kept its loyalists on the January 6 committee.

... in May, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell decided to come out forcefully against an independent commission to study the January 6, 2021 riot at the US Capitol....

... in July, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy decided to pull all Republican members he had nominated for the House committee investigating January 6.... (Two Republicans -- Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois -- are on the panel but were put there by [Nancy] Pelosi.)

... With each passing week. however, those twin decisions look worse and worse for Republicans.

... the committee has already made more headway than Republican leaders believed they would when they made the decision to walk away from the panel.

And what's worse for GOP leaders is that they have little visibility into the inner workings of the committee....

The more people ... who cooperate with the committee, the more difficult it will be Republicans to dismiss the findings of the report. This won't be about what some Democratic members say happened on January 6 and what role (if any) Trump played in it. Instead, it will be Republicans at highest levels of the Trump administration telling the story of that day. That's far more politically problematic for Republicans in Congress.

Is any of this really problematic for Republicans in Congress?

We've already learned quite a bit about what the committee knows -- and none of it has affected public opinion. Republicans are still on course to win the midterm elections. Donald Trump has higher favorability ratings than President Biden in the Real Clear Politics average, and is on track to beat Biden in 2024 if he's the GOP nominee. Never Trumpers and the most politically aware Democrats are still outraged by January 6, but beyond that there's no widespread public outcry against Trump or his team.

However, let's assume for the sake of argument that the committee finds something that does change public opinion -- or at least leads to legal peril for Trump. What happens then?

Republican voters will be furious -- but if the political death of Trump is the result of the committee's work, then the murder weapon won't have any fingerprints on it from "real" Republicans. Congressional Republicans won't be blamed. (Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger don't count as real Republicans, of course.)

It's possible that some congressional Republicans actually want this outcome. We're regularly told that Republicans in Congress secretly wish Trump would just go away so they can run someone like Ron DeSantis in 2024. If that's the case, this would actually work out quite well for them. (It's probably what Mitch McConnell wants: Trump is booted from politics and Republican voters rush to the polls to wreak vengeance on the Democrats.)

Of course, it's also possible that the committee won't do any real damage to Trump. Maybe Republicans don't want Trump at the top of the ticket again, but I'm sure they'd be happy if Democrats look like failures and the Democratic base feels demoralized.

Unless anger against Trump increases and is turned against his party, the January 6 committee won't do much damage to Republicans. I don't believe they regret their choices at all.