Benghazistein
These are heady days for the GOP. President Obama’s personal popularity and his
job approval ratings are at low ebb. The
number of people who think the country is on the wrong track is double the number
that thinks it is on the right track. The generic Congressional ballot shows
Republicans with a lead portending a sweep of 2010 proportions. At this moment, we can expect the GOP tighten
their grip on the House and take the Senate.
Since it is all over for the Democrats except for the counting,
the post-mortems, and the finger pointing, the Republicans have smartly turned
their eyes towards 2015 and beyond. My goodness
will 2017 be fun!
Which, rather sadly, bring us back to the here and now. Yes, the Democrats are going to get
slaughtered in a few months. And yes, on
top of the endless policy disputes between Congress and the White House, that
does mean that we will likely see impeachment proceedings in the House, and
quite possibly a trial in the Senate, since many in the GOP will not be able to control themselves long enough to
wait for salvation through the ballot. But
there’s eight awful months before they can really get going on that, and, there
has to be something to distract them.
So, what to do for the rest of 2014? You can block Obama’s appointees, but there’s
only so much fun to be had with that.
You could try to repeal Obamacare, but a lot of juice has been squeezed
from that lemon already. You could lay
out, in detail, what your plan is for America when you get in charge, but that
would be ill advised, because then you might actually lose.
The base needs more.
Shoveling through the ashes of the perpetual denounce machine is really
kind of dull. Of course, everyone hates
Obama-- at least the red-blooded non-taking native-born real Americans do, but
if you are a party elder, you also know a scary little secret: In 2016 Barack Obama will not be on the
ballot. Yes, you can campaign as if he
was. But he won’t be, and amidst all the
measuring of the drapes, and the secret handshakes with your largest
contributors, that is a very troubling fact.
Barack Obama might very well have brought new voters to the polls, but
he also drove many others to vote against him, and more than a few of
those were at least nominally Democrats.
I’m oversimplifying greatly, but there are basically two main
types of Republicans these days. The
first includes the ones who have worked themselves into such frenzy over
everything Obama that they embraced a world-view that sometimes seems out of
touch with reality. They actually
believe the birther nonsense, the Saul Alinsky references, the Kenyan Muslim
stuff and every wild conspiracy ginned up in every corner. The second group sees Obama as a political
problem. They disagree with him on a
philosophical level, they have (often quite legitimate) complaints about his
performance, but what they really want is for one of theirs to be in
charge. Both groups might engage in the
same tactics of obstruction and vituperation, but the truth is that most
Republicans, even those in the gerrymandered House, are not in the least bit
crazy.
You can see this shift over the last few months, as the
outlines of the size of the potential Republican victory get clearer. The sane people in the GOP don’t want to blow
it. Their spokespeople in the press are
counseling calm, deliberate action.
Obstruct, criticize, condemn, etc. are all still useful tools, but the
most important thing the GOP can possibly do is not kick it away. So
they are backing mainstream (very conservative, but supported by the party)
candidates and incumbents against insurgent ultra-ideologues.
There is a lot at stake for the GOP in the next two
cycles. Obama’s tepid performance and
his personal issues give them the chance to hard wire control of Congress, and
that means that no laws will be passed in the next couple of years without
major concessions or outright capitulation from the Democrats. And 2016 gives them the chance of a
generation—to usher in a new wave of top-to-bottom conservatism. There is also the money issue. They will always have people like the
ideologically and economically motivated Koch brothers, but the rest of their
corporate backers from organizations like ALEC and the Fortune 500 set to the
US Chamber of Commerce invest money for a return. They expect results, and results can only come
from winning. Businesses will not
perpetually throw good money after bad.
Still, one of the GOP’s biggest assets in the midterms, where
turnout is always lower, is the passion of their shock troops. That is very hard to manage, because you have
to keep the pressure-cooker perking without having the top blow off.
There are two aspects to this, both institutionally and
individually. The first is making sure
you are right wing enough to keep control (or your job) from the farther
right. But the second, if you really
have aspirations for high office in any place that isn’t deep Red, is to stay
away from the fringe and the stupid. That’s
a high wire act, as Marco Rubio showed this past weekend, when he graded
Hillary Clinton’s Secretary of State tenure an “F” (perfectly acceptable
partisan commentary) and then plunged, unnecessarily, into the climate-change
denial ritual baths.
Fringy/stupid can cost.
Polling shows that on most issues, the public favors the Democrats but
thinks them less than fully competent.
For the GOP to sweep the next two elections, they need to show they are
able to govern competently and rationally.
And they need to keep those disaffected Democrats who weren’t going to
vote for Barack Obama but might very well vote for a more conventional Democrat,
such as Hillary Clinton or even Joe Biden.
Blessedly, Judicial Watch, an ultra-right wing policy group
that bills itself as non-partisan has come to the rescue. They have uncovered, through a FOIA request,
a White House email on Benghazi that appeared to show that the Administration
was concerned about how to put the best face on the disaster.
Christmas arrived early for the GOP: the Benghazistein
monster just got reanimated. And what makes this even better is that deep in
the Libyan doo-doo is none other than Hillary Clinton. The Ghosts of Presidents Past and
Future.
Swiftly, Speaker Boehner announced yet another
investigation, to be headed by South Carolina Congressman Trey Gowdy. Just as swiftly, the GOP has started to
fundraise, showing, once again, that the best way to make money is by using
taxpayer cash as seed-corn. And, in
lockstep, conservative commentators and Fox have been running round the clock
coverage rivaling CNN’s on Flight 370.
The Democrats really don’t know what to do. There have already been over a dozen
investigations into Benghazi. Many
Democrats don’t want to participate at all and are suggesting a boycott, a
particularly dumb response, in my opinion, because someone has to be in the
room.
What really happened there?
I am not going to pretend I know.
What I think might have occurred was an intelligence failure, a slow
reaction, perhaps based on the poor intelligence, perhaps because of poor
judgment, and a White House that did a little spinning. There have been a lot of Americans that have
died overseas under Presidents of both parties, and a lot of spinning that
followed those deaths, and none of those past incidences have given rise to
anything like Benghazistein.
But I’m not really sure, and I wonder who is and from where
they are getting their information. Appointing
another committee of hanging judges isn’t going to get to the truth, and Gowdy,
on Fox News (of course) has already shown in inclinations. This will be, as he indicated before
correcting himself, a prosecution, not an investigation.
Good for the Party? Probably yes, in the short term. The lads over on the Tea Party side of the
table will have a chance to work off a little energy, the money will flow in,
and the White House and Hillary will certainly be embarrassed. Longer term, I have doubts, if for no other
reason than I don’t believe that Gowdy and his allies will really be able to
maintain any sense of due process or dignity.
That’s the real danger of Benghazistein, for both
parties. Once the monster is loose, it
will careen out of control, churning up plenty of mud, but very little clarity.
Really bad for the brand.
Both brands.
They deserve it.
March 12, 2014
Michael Liss (Moderate Moderator)
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