Politico: Republicans are worried one thing could screw up the political gift of three Obama administration controversies at once: fellow Republicans.A GOP aide explains the problem. “When one committee is leading something and some members feel left out, they’ll step out there and make an accusation to get attention,” the aide said. And rightwing media is most definitely not helping. The base is convinced that Benghazi is literally the worst thing ever! because rightwing media hacks keep telling them what they want to hear to boost their ratings. Fox host Mike Huckabee, for example, told his audience, “I believe that before it’s all over, this president will not fill out his full term.”
Top GOP leaders are privately warning members to put a sock in it when it comes to silly calls for impeachment or over-the-top comparisons to Watergate. They want members to focus on months of fact-finding investigations — not rhetorical fury.
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“We have to be persistent but patient,” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus told us. “I think where there’s smoke, there’s fire. If we present ourselves to the American people as intelligent, we’re going to be in a great place as far as showing that this administration is not transparent, is obsessed with power and hates dissent. But you don’t call for impeachment until you have evidence.”
Of course the base is the base because they’re chumps who believe whatever BS people like Huckabee throws at them, so elected Republicans must keep getting letters asking when they’re going to stop dicking around and get to the impeachment already. It’s like a hyperbolic feedback loop; some Republican says something over the top, someone like Huckabee picks up on it and amps it up further, forcing Republicans to match the hysterical fervor of the hacks audiences. Lather, rinse, repeat. They’re spinning closer and closer to overreach and it’s beginning to look pretty inevitable — their Benghazi hype has taken on a life of its own.
And Darrell Issa isn’t helping either. Sooner or later, he’s going to have to produce something other than teasers and that means calling Hillary Clinton\back to testify. According to Politico:
A Democratic strategist, knowledgeable about administration thinking, maintains that calling Clinton back would be seen as an “extreme and unprecedented stunt” and “quite a risky proposition” for House Republicans. “Congress had her an entire day in January, and she kicked their ass,” the strategist said. “If she performed that well a second time, they could lose the issue permanently. They are better off waiting until her numbers soften with time and as she comes back down to earth — in the meantime, beating the drum as a midterm issue that she is ducking and hiding.”“One aide said there are plans to stretch this probe into 2014,” the report tells us. That would seem to give Americans plenty of time to tire of watching them beat this particular dead horse.
[photo via Wikimedia Commons]
