Reactions to the appointment by House Speaker John Boehner of Representative Trey Gowdy (R-SC4) to chair the House Select Committee on Benghazi are pouring in from every corner of the D.C. ideological spectrum, and I must say, they're really not much different from their anticipation predecessors regarding the HSCB itself:
Columnist George Will told Fox News Gowdy can't be accused of being a "careerist" since he doesn't even really want his job.
"He wants to go back to Spartanburg and play golf and raise his two children," Will said on Fox News Channel's "Special Report with Bret Baier." "He's always said, 'I'm a prosecutor, not a politician,' which is why he's well-cast in this role."
And the goal of the committee isn't to energize the Republican base, Will added. It already is energized by Obamacare and other issues, he said.
No, Gowdy can't be called a "careerist," but then who was? He may want to go back to Spartanburg and find a barber that knows how to style male bangs, but so what? His country needs him where he is, and given how far down tyranny's midden hole it is already, such patriots are and will remain needed in Washington for a very, very long time, not to become careerists, but simply to drag the country back from where the genuine careerists have hijacked it. Put another way, Trey Gowdy's kids need to grow up with out their dad being around much if they're going to have a country to grow up in.
And here again, even from a center-right columnist, is this infuriating defensiveness about that "playing politics" canard again. No, the core goal of the HSCB is not to energize the Republican base, but neither are Chairman Gowdy and the GOP majority contingent obligated to subvert its investigation for the White House's benefit to avoid the "appearance of propriety" either. Why is nobody asking House Democrats to check their partisanism at the door in their attempt to pre-emptively smear the HSCB? Does anybody believe they won't use it to rev up their own disconsolate nutroots?
Republican Texas Senator Ted Cruz said he wants to see not only a bipartisan committee, but one composed of members of both the House and Senate.
"The truth shouldn't be partisan," Cruz said Monday on Fox News Channel's "Your World with Neil Cavuto."
Cruz said he is willing to accept the findings of the committee, even if it shows there was no intent by the administration to lie.
"Never attribute to malice what can be explained with incompetence," he said.
Sorry, Ted, but you of all people ought to know that the truth most definitely is partisan when (1) contending with an opposition party whose very governing philosophy is delusional - you've heard of ObamaCare, right? - and (2) the truth is positively lethal to them - as politically lethal as the brutally betraying inaction of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton was physically lethal to J. Christopher Stevens, Steve Smith, Glen Dougherty, and Tyrone Woods 601 days ago. Which is why you should not want a combined Senate-House Select Committee on Benghazi, because all that would accomplish is to provide Harry (G)Reid the opportunity to strangle it before it could ever get started.
But why shouldn't Senator Cruz be willing to accept the HSCB findings? It'll probably just get stonewalled with impunity by the White House just as all previous committees have been, this time hiding behind an all-out media demonization campaign against Trey Gowdy (aka "The New Joe McCarthy") now that the HSCB has its public face. And if the man from Spartanburg can machete his way through all the obfuscation and lies and smears to the truth, it will be what we've known all along: "Never attribute to just malice what can be explained by malice AND incompetence." Besides, it's not like the two are mutually exclusive, and that Barack Obama isn't directly responsible for both in any case.
Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona told Van Susteren that he was quick to call for a 9/11 Commission along with Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman even though Bush opposed it.
"When Abu Ghraib happened, I condemned it. Waterboarding, I was against it.
So? You're expecting that to shame Dems into following your example now that the shoe is on the other hoof? Have you forgotten that they threw Liebs out of their party in 2006 for his "bipartisan" impulses? Where did your "country before party" nonsense get you two years after that, "President McCain"? Or do you just have a compulsion to subvert South Carolina conservatives to the RINO Dark Side?
Representative Steve Cohen, D-TN9, told Fox's Neil Cavuto that he won't serve on the committee if asked because its only purpose is to hurt the presidential chances of Hillary Clinton. He said he doesn't expect what he called Republican partisanship to stop anytime soon.
"It's going to continue until Hillary Clinton is elected president," he said.
Well, this J.K. Simmons doppelganger is awfully confident, isn't he? Sheesh, at least J. Jonah Jameson had the public courtesy to wear a rug.
As to Hillary's "election" and Republican "partisanship," Cohen is fouling his knickers just like every other Democrat at the prospect of what's coming at them. They're already going down in November over ObamaCare and the Obamanomic depression and the specter of the nightmare Barack Obama's foreign and defense policies are reeling toward reality (unless John Boehner rides Amnesty to the rescue, but I digress....). That latter factor combined with the Benghazi outrage will have an outsized impact on 2016, and the Adam Schiffs and Steve Cohens of the world damn well know it. Hence their all-out attempt to smother Trey Gowdy's committee in the proverbial crib. Think of it as the first step towards Barack Obama's coup de tat.
As for Chairman Gowdy himself, well, yes, the Dems have every reason to be terrified:
Representative Trey Gowdy, the South Carolina Republican tapped to head the House select committee on Benghazi, says Democratic critics shouldn't prejudge the hearings as partisan....
He advised Democratic Representative Adam Schiff of California and others to "at least let us have a hearing before you judge it."
C'mon, Trey, as a fellow prosecutor, he knows you to well:
Gowdy told Van Susteren he wants all documents that have been seen by all the committees as well as any that have not yet been released.
"I'm not interested in redacted documents," he added. Representative Jason Chaffetz of Utah-3 told Fox News that documents received by Congress had larger portions blacked out than the same documents released to the group Judicial Watch when it made a Freedom of Information Act request.
"I want to see every single solitary relevant material document," Gowdy said. In fact, he said he wants all possible relevant documents, including presidential daily briefing reports [Hello, Executive Privilege claims....], so the committee can decide which are relevant.
Getting the truth out about Benghazi would be politically devastating to the Democrat Party, Mr. Chairman. It might even penetrate that thick fog surrounding the noggins of apathetic low-information voters, and make them actually given a damn about it, and turn them against their demigod. That's why they are "pre-judging" your committee - because they're petrified that you will succeed, and don't believe they can afford to wait just so as to create an appearance of "fairness" that won't do them any good. Who do you think they are, John McCain?
Enough with all this pre-game posturing and position-jockeying. Let's kick this mother off.
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