Now imagine what the Jan. 6 committee would have looked like with five Republicans on the panel, three of them Trump loyalists picked by McCarthy. How many times would there have been objections to playing snippets of taped testimony, rather than playing the entire testimony? Why not bring witnesses in for live examinations, with skeptical questioning from the minority? How many times would a member have objected to tapes on grounds of hearsay, leading to lengthy disputes? How many GOP members would have demanded testimony from FBI and National Guard and Capitol Hill Police officials, to lay out a case that the rioting was in part the fault of these bodies? Would there have been an effort to make the case that there were irregularities in the election—if not the Venezuelan-Italian satellite-Chinese bamboo ballots lunacy, then in the more “respectable” case that courts and state election officials had exceeded their power in making voting more accessible? Would GOP members have echoed Jim Banks’ demand that the committee look into the violence that accompanied some of the protests in these of George Floyd’s murder?

To be clear, the evidence offered so far by the committee has been powerful, even shocking, enough so that its impact would likely have survived any attempt to undercut it. But what has made it all the more powerful and shocking is the uninterrupted narrative flow, the skillful packaging of texts and testimony (under the guiding hand of TV news executive James Goldston). There is simply no way five GOP members of the committee would have sat by silently as that narrative unspooled.

But thanks to Kevin McCarthy, those seats went unfilled. For that, the country owes him a deep, if thoroughly sincere, debt of gratitude.