Playing politics with Benghazi and the IRS

There were certainly valid conversation worthy points to be made and had with regard to the IRS and Benghazi issues in 2012. They were lesser issues in a year when jobs and the economy as well as health care reform took center stage in a presidential election year. With the 2014 Midterm Elections on the horizon in six months, both parties are looking to rev up their bases as they will be more crucial in a non-presidential election year when less people vote. At the same time, both parties will be trying to sway swing voters their way to assist with close races. What worked well for the Republicans in 2010 when they took back the U.S. House and picked up governor's seats and statehouse majorities was their messaging. Whether everything they said was factual or accurate through the campaign cycle pales in comparison to the spinning the same angle over and over until it might be perceived as accurate to a voter. With Citizens United and McCutcheon decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court, Super PACs and billionaires can run wild with similar misleading ads.

With all that in mind, Republicans in Congress are looking to do their part to help their party remain in control in the U.S. House and potentially take the U.S. Senate this year. Two focal points to their strategy are constantly talking about the IRS and Benghazi despite multiple hearings and studies for both. The New York Times Editorial Board provided a look at this matter recently.

Their analysis is below:

The hottest competition in Washington this week is among House Republicans vying for a seat on the Benghazi kangaroo court, also known as the Select House Committee to Inflate a Tragedy Into a Scandal. Half the House has asked to “serve” on the committee, which is understandable since it’s the perfect opportunity to avoid any real work while waving frantically to right-wing voters stomping their feet in the grandstand.

They won’t pass a serious jobs bill, or raise the minimum wage, or reform immigration, but House Republicans think they can earn their pay for the rest of the year by exposing nonexistent malfeasance on the part of the Obama administration. On Thursday, they voted to create a committee tospend “such sums as may be necessary” to conduct an investigation of the 2012 attack on the consulate in Benghazi, Libya. The day before, they voted to hold in contempt Lois Lerner, the former Internal Revenue Service official whom they would love to blame for the administration’s crackdown on conservative groups, if only they could prove there was a crackdown, which they can’t, because there wasn’t.

Both actions stem from the same impulse: a need to rouse the most fervent anti-Obama wing of the party and keep it angry enough to deliver its donations and votes to Republicans in the November elections. For a while it seemed as if the Affordable Care Act would perform that role, but Republicans ran into a problem when the country began to realize that it was not destroying American civilization but in fact helping millions of people.

Party leaders needed something more reliable, so they went back and revived two dormant scandals from last year, the embers of which were faithfully tended by Republican adjuncts on Fox News and talk radio. Their hope is to show that the administration is corrupt and untrustworthy, and if Hillary Rodham Clinton also gets roughed up in the process, so much the better.

Four Americans, including the United States ambassador, died in Benghazi, and their deaths have been crassly used by Republicans as a political cudgel, wildly swung in the dark. They have failed to provide proof for any number of conspiracy theories about the administration’s failures, including the particularly ludicrous charge from Representative Darrell Issa that Mrs. Clinton, then the secretary of state, told the Pentagon to “stand down” and not help defend the American compound.

In fact, investigations by two congressional committees (including one run by Republicans) found that there was never any kind of “stand-down order” or request. But Mr. Issa and others keep repeating it because, for their purposes, the facts don’t matter.

Now Republicans are frothing about a newly released email message showing that the White House wanted Susan Rice, the American ambassador to the United Nations at the time, to go on television in 2012 and make the case that the attack was not a failure of administration policy. The message should have been turned over earlier because all it shows is a routine attempt to spin the news in the most favorable way to the White House. Though it is not the slightest evidence of a cover-up, it has become the foundation for the committee’s existence. Demonstrating the panel’s true purpose, Republican political operatives are already raising money by stoking donor anger on Benghazi.

Democrats who are now debating whether to participate in the committee shouldn’t hesitate to skip it. Their presence would only lend legitimacy to a farce.

Similarly, the Justice Department should not press Ms. Lerner’s contempt citation before a grand jury. She invoked her Fifth Amendment rights at a hearing last year and refused to testify, but Republicans claim, without foundation, that she waived those rights by first proclaiming her innocence. Her refusal, they said, was contemptuous of Congress. Little nuisances like constitutional rights or basic facts can’t be allowed to stand in the way when House Republicans need to whip up their party’s fury.