HOW'S THAT LASER-LIKE FOCUS ON GOVERNING WORKING OUT, REPUBLICANS?

Why you'd almost think Republicans were deliberately misleading us when they said they were going to concentrate on showing us they could govern:

The Republican Congress is getting ready to ramp up the Obamacare hearings, firing up enough investigations to keep Obama administration officials visiting hearing rooms on both sides of the Capitol for the next two years.

They'll shine the spotlight on everything from cable-friendly scandals to tried-and-true complaints about the law's side effects. They’re going to investigate premium increases for individuals and small businesses, the impact on the federal deficit, payments to insurance companies that attract too many sick people, and the threat of huge tax headaches for some Obamacare customers next spring.

They'll be watching closely as the new enrollment season for the health care law begins on Saturday, although they'll only jump in with hearings if there's another disaster. And yes, Republicans are going to have a lot of fun with Jonathan Gruber....

They're probably not going to drag Gruber up to the Hill to testify, but they will use his comments to taunt administration witnesses and suggest that the law wasn't passed in an honest, transparent way....

I just had a crazy thought: Maybe all that talk about making governing the #1 priority was a ruse to throw mainstream-media journalists off the scent, while Republicans really planned to do nothing but this sort of thing for the next two years. That couldn't be right, could it? That would suggest that the mainstream press is stupid and naive and easily gulled. Could that possibly be true?

I love the fact that Republicans want to have a Gruber show trial, but don't want Gruber to show up. I guess they're afraid he could be contrite, in which case portraying him as worse than Hitler for the next two years might not seem sporting. Or maybe they're afraid that he'll demonstrate why, despite his loose tongue, he actually earned the money he's been paid by the federal government (and some state governments) -- in all likelihood, he understand this stuff on a technical level better than anyone else in America, and we might actually get to see that side of him, as ignorant Republicans struggle to keep up.

But yes, there are going to be multiple hearings in multiple committees in both houses of Congress. It's going to be all Obamacare all the time in Congress (unless, I suppose, Benghazi intervenes). But the mainstream press won't ask whether this contradicts the Republicans' pious pronouncements about governing. Hey, Republicans gave their word. It would be unfair to hold them to it.