For the past few days the majority of cartoons have been about Benghazi, the IRS and the Tea Party, or the DOJ spying on the Associated Press. Or some combination of all three.
Few have been exceptional either way; most are lukewarm and unimpressive, not really worth my time. Obama as Nixon, the ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ image with a footprint labeled ‘IRS,’ a literal tea party with the IRS showing up to audit them.
But because none of these issues are going to go away in the next few days (Republicans certainly aren’t going to shut up about them anytime soon) I feel I could at least comment on a couple trends.
First and foremost, there’s been at least half a dozen cartoons expressing the idea that Benghazi has ruined Hilary Clinton’s 2016 chances. Bullshit. By the time the primary races start in late 2015 (or earlier, if we’re unlucky) Benghazi will be old news. There’s just no way a story can remain relevant for over three years. It is outright impossible in today’s world. As the next few months pass other stories will occur, other events will take precedence, and the only people that still care about Benghazi will be an ever-shrinking, ever-fringier group akin to 9/11 Truthers. Hell, they’ve already set up the groundwork themselves by spending so much time on claims of a cover-up and the idea that Obama is trying to hide something; the more they focus on that, the more they marginalize themselves.
If Hilary Clinton wants to run in 2016 Benghazi will not be a roadblock. The Democratic base won’t dredge up the embassy attacks during the primary, and if she gets the nomination the Republicans will look for more timely and important things to attack her on. Sure, there would probably be some right-wing pundit or Congressman from the middle of nowhere who tries to make Benghazi an issue again, but it wouldn’t stick.
Second, there’s the idea that this confluence of scandals is going to bring down President Obama, with impeachment being the logical end-game. With the precedent of Bill Clinton’s impeachment I can’t say Obama being impeached is an impossibility. But Clinton’s impeachment blew up in the Republicans’ faces. Oh yes, people still make jokes about Clinton being a horndog, but he stayed president while Newt Gingrinch resigned as Speaker and then from the House itself.
Will Republicans be hesitant to pursue impeachment with a different Democratic president because of that? Some, maybe. The ones who care about the Republican party’s future electoral chances. But there’s plenty of House members who have little concern beyond being able to primp and preen for their constituents, who only care about appearing tough against the Left.
Impeachment is not completely out of the question, but if it happens I don’t think think it will turn out the way Republicans want. But I think the most likely turnout is Republicans won’t want to take things that far and risk it blowing up in their faces, they just want to keep these scandals as red meat for their base and not as tools to make anything happen.
And finally, I just want to express my frustration over the blatant partisanship in how these scandals are being covered. I’m not surprised by it, let me make that clear, but there are times when the “Look at what the other side has done, ignore the identical occurrences by my side” posturing gets so thick it’s unbelievable. The selective outrage over, say, the IRS/Tea Party story when a similar thing happened under the Bush administration, or ‘progressives’ racing to defend the Obama administration spying on journalists when they would shit a brick if a Republican was currently president, gets too much to dismiss as business as usual.
Yes, everyone is biased, but there’s bias and there’s intentional ignorance.
Conservative and non-partisan cartoonists have been phoning in a ton of Benghazi and Tea Party/IRS cartoons the past couple days, yet Jeff Stahler still manages to make time to produce a cartoon more pointless and unimaginative than all of them.
It’s impressive, in its own, shitty way.
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All the relevant information about Benghazi is out there and Republicans should move on to current stories.
A good cartoon.
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The fact that he took a stance contrary to my own proves he’s been brainwashed, and is not an independent thinker.
Brilliant logic there.
(Also, note how he presents this as Hawking being convinced to do something (by who or what, he doesn’t say) rather than Hawking himself choosing not to go.)
I’m so glad secotm has picked up on the steaming pile of shit that is Dry Bones.
I’ve talked about him before a couple times, but not a lot. I just don’t care about Israel one way or another, so I ignore most of his “Oh, we’re so persecuted” whinefests.
The fact that he took a stance contrary to my own proves he’s been brainwashed, and is not an independent thinker.
Brilliant logic there.
(Also, note how he presents this as Hawking being convinced to do something (by who or what, he doesn’t say) rather than Hawking himself choosing not to go.)
Being late to use an obvious analogy is one thing. It’s another thing to use one that we’ve already seen doesn’t make any sense. Benghazi’s not covering up something, Benghazi is being covered up.
Benghazi is being covered up? What about Benghazi is being covered up? The Obama administration has answered every question about it that Republicans have been asking for, and Republicans in Congress have been ignoring those answers so they can keep harping on not being given answers.
Didn’t express myself properly: the idea Benghazi is being covered up is a meme the right-wing has been pushing lately (and Ariail and Payne can’t present it coherently). Not sure why they’re suddenly caring again after the story had died out months ago, but when it comes to this type of shit I don’t expect rhyme or reason.
I get their fantasy end game - Obama will be impeached, Hilary Clinton can’t run in 2016 - but like Solyndra, like Fast and Furious, like the New Black Panther Party, like the birth certificate, like every other manufactured scandal, there’s nothing really there. I said before Benghazi was not handled in the ideal way, but there are valid reasons for why military support was not sent to the embassy (it was too far away to do anything) or why the original claim was the attack was due to an anti-Islam video (that was the best intelligence they had at the time; when new information came to light the administration changed its story in response).
But I think the real reason this has such traction is because even if Republicans admit to themselves they can’t get any impeachment proceedings out of this, there is another possible goal, one that’s more attainable.
They want to make Obama toxic. They want to bring Obama down to the level of George W. Bush.
As we saw recently with the Bush administration back in the spotlight because of the opening of the presidential library, there are many on the Right who want the Bush legacy to be reassessed. Post-Katrina Bush’s approval ratings were on a downward slope and he, Cheney, the Republican party as a whole became noxious in the eyes of the public, and other scandals like the Iraq war and Abu Gharib (previously ignored to such an extent that Bush managed to win the 2004 election just a year before Hurricane Katrina) took on greater, negative impact.
But there are still people dedicated to repeating “Bush kept us safe after 9/11” and “Going into Iraq was the morally right thing to do.” And people aren’t buying it. Bush’s legacy is set, history has already judged him.
So if the Right can’t rehabilitate the Bush administration’s standing, there’s the other option: bring down the other side. Bush will still look like an incompetent fool, but maybe they can get Obama to look just as bad.
Being late to use an obvious analogy is one thing. It’s another thing to use one that we’ve already seen doesn’t make any sense. Benghazi’s not covering up something, Benghazi is being covered up.
Chris Muir’s Day by Day is full of suck. A good webcomic.
Is he actually claiming there’s 57 million undocumented aliens in America? That’s over 1/6th of the total population.