GOP overreaches in Obama probes
Within one week, President Obama’s White House was under siege.
There are unanswered questions about Benghazi; a Justice Department that admits rummaging through the telephone records of news agencies; and word that the IRS targeted rightwing groups with enhanced scrutiny during the run-up to the 2012 presidential election.
There isn’t a scintilla of evidence that any of those scandals were approved by, or engineered by, Obama. But that hasn’t stopped some Republicans from tossing around the word “impeachment.”
Let’s all hope they overplay their hands.
So far, they’re doing a good job of that.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah claims the president’s handling of the Benghazi affair is an “impeachable offense.”
Even Reince Priebus, the Chairman of the Republican National Committee, and one of the most vocal Republican Obama detractors, cautions against a “call for impeachment until you have evidence.”
Especially since an over-eager ABC reporter, Jonathon Karl, reported that he’d uncovered email that tended to indicate that the White House had been behind “scrubbing” talking points about the Benghazi attack, when, in fact, he’d been fed the misleading handiwork of a Republican operative.
That’s really a scandal within a scandal. Who is the Republican who was so anxious to make Obama a villain, that they became the real villain?
A few days later, the White House released a hundred Benghazi-related emails, but that didn’t lesson the Republican teeth-gritting.
In fact, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (“Our goal is to make Barack Obama a one-term president”) appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press, armed with even more non-evidence about a supposed White House cover-up, until he was asked to lay his cards on the table.
Host David Gregory asked McConnell, “But you have specific evidence that they made up a tale, or was it based on information they had at the time?”
McConnell didn’t have any evidence. He was simply throwing-out the specter of a cover-up to sate the blood thirst of his Republican supporters. (He’s up for re-election, you know.)
“Well, the talking points clearly were not accurate. I think getting to the bottom of this is an important investigation,” McConnell replied. In other words, there’s no evidence of a cover-up, but we’ll keep hinting there is one.
The same subterfuge erupted over the IRS matter.
McConnell kept talking about the supposed “culture of intimidation” that exists in Obama’s White House. (He may well have said “Obama doesn’t know his place.”)
Gregory kept trying to get McConnell to connect the dots between that supposed “culture of intimidation” and any action the president took that proved it was real.
“You can you talk about a culture. Do you have any evidence that the President of the United States directed what you call a culture of intimidation at the IRS to target political opponents?”
“I-I don’t know what the facts are,” McConnell replied. TRANSLATION: “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. We haven’t even seen any smoke, yet. Does anybody have a match?”
It’s not like these scandals will leave the president completely unscathed.
But for the time being, his job approval has actually gone up in at least one poll.
A CNN/ORC International poll that was released last week indicated that Obama’s job approval rose from 51 percent to 53 percent since the previous poll was released in April.
Another poll, the Washington Post/ABC poll, indicates the president’s approval has remained steady at 51 percent.
It seems, for now at least, that Americans aren’t buying the Republican’s chest-thumping about the president’s supposed “impeachable offenses.”
In the meantime, those scandals were wiped from the headlines by the devastation that took place as a result of the tornado in Moore, Okla.
Ironically, Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe is one of the Republicans that had been hinting that President Obama might have to face impeachment. But Inhofe, himself, is facing scrutiny. He voted against disaster relief for the victims of Hurricane Sandy. Now he’s having to answer questions about the possible disaster aide for the victims of his own state.
If he votes against that aide, could that be an “impeachable offense?”
Uniontown native Edward A. Owens is a three time Emmy Award winner and 20 year veteran of television news. Email him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net