At the Daily Beast, Ron Christie says Democrats are afraid of yet another Benghazi investigation because we fear it will reveal heretofore unplumbed depths of administration incompetence. Ed Kilgore laughs at the notion that Democrats are afraid:
When people in politics say stuff like this -- my opponents are making light of this issue because it secretly terrifies them -- I figure some serious self-deception is at hand. And that could be the case here. If Democrats are huddled quietly in the bars and opium dens where they conspire against America, confiding their fear of Benghazi! as the Rosetta Stone to all their nefarious schemes, I sure haven’t heard about it. Sometimes when people laugh at you it’s because they think you’re being funny.Personally, I think there's reason to fear -- but not because of administration guilt. If screwing up embassy security were an impeachable offense, Ronald Reagan should have been impeached repeatedly. It's a dangerous world out there, and neither party has a monopoly on security failings.
What there is to fear, though, is the ability of Republicans to generate the illusion of unspeakable evil out of next to nothing. Voter fraud. Death panels. The Ground Zero mosque. ACORN. Republicans can inflict political damage regardless of whether they're telling the truth. It's like a political version of swatting -- faking an incident that sends a SWAT team to the home of an enemy. It doesn't matter that that person isn't really guilty of what the swatter told the cops is happening at the house -- the target can still get seriously hurt.
That's what Republicans do to their enemies politically. That's what they're trying to do now.
5 comments:
A little freaked out now. I was expecting them to make big fools of themselves, and you and Ed Kilgore have made me actually get worried about this.
The wingnuts do CLAIM to believe that Obama might have deliberately withheld help from the outpost to help with his reelection. When you push them on it, the ones that I talked to [online] can't really explain why that would work.
This dog-and-pony show won't change any minds. The folks who don't keep up with politics(MOST of the country!)are scratching their heads right now and wondering why we're back at "Benghazi!!!".
There were actually two separate Terrorist Attacks in Beirut in 1983.
On April 18, 1983 the Beirut Embassy Car Bombing killed 17 Embassy personnel (and 46 Lebanese) and the follow on Truck Bombing attack 6 months later on October 23, 1983 at the US Barracks in Beirut killed 241 Marines, Soldiers and Sailors.
The most despicable thing is the attacks followed the same tactics because the Terrorists knew the Embassy Marine Guards were barred by Ronald Reagan from having ammo at their posts.
Yes, there were two attacks in '83, and another one, just outside Beirut, on September 20, 1984. Twenty-four people were killed, including two U.S. military personnel. This was in the middle of a presidential campaign. Reagan was on his way to a landslide victory. Did he pause in his campaigning? Nope. Here's a post I wrote about all the campaign stops he made the next day.
This is also a form of voter suppression.
They hope that if they create enough fake outrages, that the voting public will suffer from "Outrage Fatigue," and feel less like voting.
And this is where the MSM helps them, with their "Both sides do...", "he-said/she-said" rhetoric.
If both sides suck - or, both sides/candidates are the same: Thanks again, Ralph Nader - why go and vote?
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