Letters to the Editor: The GOP obstructed and sabotaged. So we have the Jan. 6 committee

To the editor: Columnist Jonah Goldberg has it correct when he argues that the House Jan. 6 committee should not have been necessary, because former President Trump should have been convicted after his most recent impeachment.

However, Goldberg blames House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) for not involving Republicans in the process. Does Goldberg fail to understand that there are not enough Republicans who are at all interested in pursing proposals advanced by the Democrats?

It’s all about politics and trying to regain power at the expense of so many important issues — to wit, gun regulation, immigration reform, additional COVID-19 funding, gas prices, inflation and others. For them, it’s not about what’s best for the country; rather, it’s what’s best for the GOP right now.

Maurice Garcia, Newbury Park

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To the editor: Goldberg seems to create a false history.

No, Pelosi did not choose a partisan political path. Here is what happened.

Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) proposed to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) a bipartisan independent commission to investigate Jan. 6. Both McConnell and McCarthy put party above country and rejected it.

Pelosi then proposed a House committee, which was approved. McCarthy named five Republicans, cynically including two who were credibly identified at the time as potential fact witnesses. So, Pelosi rejected those two members. Then McCarthy, again putting party ahead of country, failed to name two replacements and pulled the remaining three.

Norman Rodewald, Moorpark

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To the editor: I agree that there shouldn’t have to be a Jan. 6 committee. Yet our Constitution and our country have always been challenged.

There was our bloody but determined birth, Great Britain’s attempt to take the territory back in 1812, the Civil War of the 1860s, two world wars and the attack on our homeland on Sept. 11, 2001. Now, with the latest challenge, a bloody organized attempt to usurp our constitutional democracy, we find ourselves once again dealing with the aftermath.

But if enough of the attainable truth regarding Jan. 6 leads to prosecutions, there should be no reservation about proceeding with alacrity, irrespective of any political consequences, public embarrassment, hurt feelings or worn-out claims of a witch hunt.

Dan Mariscal, Montebello