The Republican play on the Jan 6 Commission is so obvious, it shouldn't be hard to counter
Everybody already knows the broad outlines of what happened on January 6. It was an attempted insurrection by Trump supporters, promoted, aided, and abetted by the former president, and dozens of Republican members of Congress.
What is needed now is a record for history documenting the details of how this all came to be. Whether it's done as a bipartisan Congressional Commission or a Select Committee isn't going to change the outcome of the historical record. The facts will be laid bare one way or the other (and the facts will not be kind to Republicans).
The difference between the two types of investigation is that the Big Lie Republicans will find it much easier to continue to push their Big Lie if the investigation is done by a Select Committee. A Select Committee would no doubt come to the same conclusions as a bipartisan Commission, but if Republicans allow a bipartisan Commission to take place, they'll find it much more difficult to ignore the inevitable conclusions. With a Select Committee they can simply blow it all off as a partisan liberal plot to damage Republicans at the ballot box. "The Democrats couldn't provide us with a satisfactory bipartisan deal, so now they're going it alone, which was their plan all along!" they will whine.
Which is of course why they're going to make sure that a bipartisan Commission does not happen, and a Select Committee is inevitable.
Since the Republican glidepath here is to deny a bipartisan Commission, force a Select Committee, and then blow off the Select Committee as a Pelosi-led witch hunt, the smart political play for the Select Committee might be to actually get Republicans involved. I know that doesn't sound like a very tempting prospect, but if Pelosi announces a Select Committee with a similar makeup to the one negotiated by Republicans for the bipartisan Commission they're now opposed to -- appoint both Democratic and Republican investigators, with a Democratic chair and a Republican vice chair -- it could go a long way towards countering the Republican narrative which we all know is coming.
Since Democrats control the creation of Select Committees at the moment, they could presumably make sure that the Republican members were people who already supported/voted for a bipartisan Commission, or who voted to impeach Trump. In other words, the few remaining Republicans who have actually put integrity over their party's push towards an authoritarian cult of personality. People who will take their work seriously, not people like Jim Jordan or Devin Nunes who would simply use their positions to ruin the investigation.
For the purpose of getting to the bottom of what happened, I honestly don't think it matters much if Republicans are on the Select Committee -- the truth is going to come out whether they're on it or not. But from a purely political perspective, it might be a good play to make sure that we reach the truth with some bipartisan cover.
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