Skip to main content

Epic Fail!

By

The Benghazi House Select Committee self destructs



If the aim of this special committee to further investigate the attack on the special diplomatic mission in Benghazi was to destroy Hillary, it failed miserably.  Hillary ripped Trey Gowdy and his hand-picked committee to shreds at a hearing that couldn't have come at a worse time as far as these elections are concerned.

This special committee has dragged this "investigation" out for over a year, after previous investigations by Republican committees yielded nothing.  Gowdy would have been wise to pull the plug months ago, but instead he persevered in the wake of the faux e-mail scandal thinking something would turn up in all those purged e-mails to make Hillary complicit in the events that took place in Benghazi over three years ago.  This despite the CIA telling the committee there was nothing in the e-mails to suggest Hillary had done anything specifically wrong when serving as Secretary of State.

Gowdy can't be held entirely to blame, as the Republicans wanted to drag this investigation out through the entire election cycle, hoping that it would diminish Hillary's stature in the eyes of voters.  But, what happened two days ago had entirely the opposite effect.  Hillary now looks more presidential than ever, having stared down this committee once again and revealed Gowdy and his fellow Republicans to be nothing more than a bunch of spiteful idiots.

If you are looking for a playbook on how not to win a presidential election this is it.  The Republicans tried to take out Hillary even before she declared her candidacy.  Call it a pre-emptive strike if you like, as there were no less than five investigations carried out, which revealed nothing out of the ordinary.  As Jeb Bush said, "stuff happens."   Ambassador Stevens had a security guard of CIA contractors and former Navy SEALS to protect him for specifically this type of situation.  Sadly, his highly trained security guard was overwhelmed.

However, the Republicans were determined to make Benghazi into an indictment of the President's foreign policy and to undermine Hillary Clinton, who even back in 2012 was considered the leading 2016 Democratic presidential candidate.  They went out of their way to "investigate" this incident, creating a cloud of suspicion in the minds of most GOP voters.

Kevin McCarthy had spilled the beans to Sean Hannity, inadvertently discrediting the committee.  Even Fox News was forced to admit the gig was up.  McCarthy was slated to be the next House Speaker after the firebrand Republican representatives had managed to force John Boehner into retirement.  Since then McCarthy has been run out of town as well, leaving the door open for one of the Tea Party's favorites, Jason Chaffetz, to assume the lead in the House of Representatives.

It has been the classic case of the tail wagging the dog ever since the 2010 mid-term elections when the Tea Party vaulted the Republicans back into control of the House, with Boehner nothing more than a titular head.  From the beginning, the Tea Party caucus sought to make the Obama administration irrelevant by imposing its authority in Congress.  They pressed for repeal of "Obamacare." They sought to slash the remaining Stimulus Bill programs and incentives.  They demanded huge cuts in domestic spending, to the point of slashing embassy security around the world.  When Benghazi happened, it wasn't so much an indictment on the Obama administration, as it was the Republican House budget committee, which repeatedly refused to grant additional security requests.  No matter, the Republicans blamed Hillary, or Obama, or anyone other than themselves.

At every turn, the House Republicans did their level best to undermine the President's authority, often with the help of Senate agitators like Ted Cruz, who pushed for a government shutdown in 2013 that blew up in their face.   Boehner tried to do some damage control, but it was too late.  The Republican-led House may have survived the shutdown, thanks to a miserably low voter turnout in 2014, but the GOP faces a potential devastating set of losses in 2016, not just in the White House race, but throughout key Congressional districts, which threaten their control of the two chambers.

Yet, the Republican Party was determined to continue to go after Hillary Clinton, thinking she might fold under the heat of another hearing.  However, she was the one who shined while Gowdy looked more pale than ever as he tried to keep this farce going, even when all the major networks had turned away, including Fox.  Well, GOP'ers, you dug your own hole, now you have to lie in it!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro
228 comments
Read more

Dylan in America

By
Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan.  Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose.  Looks like only yesterday.  Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.
182 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more