House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi recently announced the creation of a select committee to “investigate” January 6th. This despite the fact that Pelosi has herself already pronounced what she feels happened and who was responsible, blaming white supremacy, anti-Semitism, and Islamaphobia, three things that clearly had nothing to do with the unrest that day (see Nancy Pelosi Proclaims the ‘Root Cause’ of January and Kneecaps Her Argument in the Process).

The next question was going to be who was placed on the committee, which exists to further the January 6th obsession for partisan reasons. The Democrat hacks that were assigned were no surprise (Raskins, Schiff, Thompson, etc.), but then there’s Rep. Liz Cheney. The sidelined Republican has not stopped talking about January 6th since it happened, and that eventually led to her removal from House leadership. Now, Pelosi has offered her a position on the committee.

In response, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is threatening to nuke any Republican who accepts such an offer.

NEW: McCarthy threatens to strip any GOP member of their committee assignments if they accept an offer from Pelosi to serve on 1/6 commission, @jamiegangel reports.

— Ana Cabrera (@AnaCabrera) July 1, 2021

This would be a big move for GOP leadership to make, and the threat is pointed squarely at Cheney. Anti-Trump Rep. Adam Kinzinger, always the dude standing up against the wall at the dance despite his pathetic attention-seeking, was not even asked by Pelosi to be on the committee.

As it stands now, it appears Cheney will accept the offer so that leaves McCarthy with his finger on the political trigger. The question is whether he will follow through? Frankly, if he doesn’t, I believe he’s crushing a golden opportunity to be Majority Leader after the 2022 election. If he folds here and shows he isn’t a man of his word, that’s going to put a bitter taste in the mouth of Republicans.

In other words, I don’t think he has much of a choice but to remove Cheney from her committee assignments if she doesn’t back down. Will she do so? The answer is almost certainly not. She’s toast and I think she is finally coming to terms with that. Her future is doing analysis for Jake Tapper on CNN, not in Congress, and certainly not as a leader in the Republican Party.

I’ll end by noting that some of the usual suspects are insisting that if McCarthy does this, it’ll hurt the party. That’s nonsense. Just like those people were wrong about Cheney becoming some great force after her prior ouster (she’s been completely marginalized and ignored since then), they are wrong now. Voters do not care about this stuff. They do not care about Liz Cheney. Given that, McCarthy has nothing to lose by going nuts here. He should do so.