(H/T: Hot Air Headlines) This is not going to end up being a windmill joust against Barack Obama. Much to the Democrats’ secret displeasure.
GOP leaders will help coordinate various House investigations into controversies involving the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the State Department.
But the key Republican lawmaker with jurisdiction on all these matters said that a rerun of the Clinton-era probes won’t occur.
“These are all different agencies of government. This administration owns the failures, but not necessarily the direct blame … we’re looking at each individual case so it’s very different than what you view historically as a target where it [was] always about President Clinton. This isn’t about President Obama,” House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) told The Hill.
Of course it’s not. It’s about the proper application of pain. Fully deserved pain, I hasten to add: the national Democratic party broke its tacit deal with the national Republican party (and more importantly, the United States of America) in 2008 by nominating and electing a man woefully unsuited for leading the country; worse, the new President brought along with him a political crew trained in Chicago’s profoundly poisonous (yet resolutely second-string) political environment. As I said on Twitter a couple of days ago, what has resulted since then has not been a flaw in the system; it is the system, and we’re going to have to be pretty vigorous about cleaning out the rot.
The trick, of course, is to not over-focus on the man at the top. It’s the President’s political appointees and (mostly union) allies in the bureaucracies that have to go, of course: Barack Obama will be walking out the door on January 20, 2017 any which way*. As for hastening Obama’s Walk of Shame: the major problem with impeachment is that it leads inexorably to “Joe Biden? President of the United States? Good God!” – remember, in the 1990s Al Gore was not yet widely considered to be quite mad – which means that an unsuccessful impeachment attempt would be worse than both a successful impeachment attempt, and no impeachment attempt at all. In fact, the goal here is not to make it personal, period. Speaker John Boehner put it pretty well, I think: “Asked at a Thursday press conference if he still trusts the president, Boehner responded, “It’s not about trusting someone. Our job here is to get to the truth, and we’re going to get to the truth. And I know what you’re up to. I’m not taking the bait.””
I know, I know: you’re personally offended by this White House. So am I. You want the whole sorry lot of them to, as Robert Ludlum vividly put it once, to end up cleaning urinals in Cairo. So do I. You’d like this to be over, because there’s three and a half more years of fecklessness scheduled from this administration. I fully share in that profound and comprehensive disgust. But there is an ancient saying of my people that applies, here:
Don’t get mad. Get even.
It’s good advice. Especially when the other side really, really wants you to get mad.
Moe Lane (crosspost)
*I don’t believe that Barack Obama wants to stage a coup.
I also believe that there’s not a chance in Hell that the military would tolerate him trying to stage one.
If I had a deity, I would be out sacrificing a mouse .. Boehner actually seems to *GET IT* in a way Gingrich & Co. didn’t…
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And yes, “Don’t get mad, get even” is very good advice ..
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(and if I had a copy of Deth Specula’s “Weasels and Cream” album, I’d have “Get even more” playing .. but this is into the truly, deeply obscure)
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Mew
I believe that targeting and destroying Obama will only make his followers more ardent and GOP will end up alienating many. I prefer the idea of diminishing him and targeting big govt. itself as evil. I see that as less divisive and more helpful for weakening Obama’s influence on our society after he leaves the White House. (Assuming that does happen)
The problem is that Boehner and the rest of the Republican leadership like Big Government.
So yeah I like the approach Boehner and Issa are taking.
You’re right, have to destroy the machine that put this guy in office. Let the rot be revealed. Talking impeachment only gives the Dems ammo to use against us in the next two elections, and allows them to continue their attack theme that we hate Obama because of the color of his skin – whereas we despise him for his anti-American politics.
It also puts the Dems in the awkward position of having to defend the IRS. Particularly rogue IRS personal targeting individual taxpayers. Try winning an election holding that hand: “The yes what they did was wrong but they shouldn’t be punished for it” hand. And there are other targets as well the Justice Department, EPA and Labor Department all seem to have engaged in outside the boundary behaviour as well.
The republican congress has been handed a quantity of raw iron and the means to turn it into surgical instruments. If they use their heads, they can carve this criminal-minded administration up and leave it too crippled to do more damage.
More importantly, qixlqatl, they can hamstring the big machine so that not *just* this administration can’t use it for malicious/stupid purposes.
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Mew
Yeah, I’m holding my breath for that……. 🙁
Yeah, I know, but it beats the hell out of the other alternative.
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Mew
Personally offended by this White House? Yes. Even more offended by the big government perpetual f*** up machine? Absolutely.
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We have been handed a great opportunity to strike a blow, not against Obama, but against the IRA, EPA, Obamacare and every other machination of bureaucracy in DC.