Time to call in the Dogs

Darrell Issa has been doing his damnedest to try to drag Obama into a scandal, but so far has only looked like the Congressional version of Glenn Beck with all his half-brained conspiracy theories. Issa simply won't let go of Benghazi, calling Jay Carney a "paid liar" the other day,which brought condemnation from within his own ranks. But, the GOP mostly stays mum about their McCarthyite pit bull, thinking if he digs around enough he might actually find something that they can all gnaw on.

Meanwhile, Obama pretty much defused the "Verizongate" scandal, noting that they only tracked phone calls, not listened in, which the Patriot Act allows the administration to do. For that matter, all the police needs is a court order to do the same, and the Obama administration has that too. But, the media-generated scandal does call attention to the fact that the Patriot Act was renewed for the second time, which Obama signed onto in 2011. So, if Americans are that concerned with unwarranted eavesdropping then they better urge their Congresspersons to not renew it again in 2015.

Still, there is this overall impression by those on the Left that Obama is continuing many of the same policies initiated under Bush, resulting in this caricature, while the Right continues to vilify him any chance it gets. David Frum effectively argued in his last piece on The Daily Beast, that the GOP would be wise to refrain from shibboleths about Obama and focus more on strategy in the coming months, because the midterms currently favor the Democrats.

Obama's "middle of the road" approach seems to infuriate persons on both ends of the political spectrum. Yet, his approval rating holds steady in the face of all these faux scandals, which I imagine is why Republican leaders would like to see Issa back off. The GOP runs the danger of being viewed purely as scandalmongers.

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