Republicans, Obsessed

Charlie Cook:

Ques­tion: What’s the dif­fer­ence between the House Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Benghazi’s hear­ings last week and a train wreck?

An­swer: Once a train is com­ing off the rails, the pas­sen­gers know it.

When mem­bers of the se­lect com­mit­tee put Hil­lary Clin­ton in the pil­lory last week, they seemed bliss­fully un­aware that they looked like fools. The irony is that opin­ion polls show that a ma­jor­ity of Amer­ic­ans be­lieve she has been less than truth­ful and yet still think that these hear­ings are all about par­tis­an­ship. No won­der. What came through in the long-an­ti­cip­ated con­front­a­tion was that these hear­ings are less about the murders of four Amer­ic­ans in Libya and more about tak­ing Clin­ton down, just as House Ma­jor­ity Lead­er Kev­in Mc­Carthy pretty much con­ceded a month ago.

Two of the worst sins in polit­ics are to be­come ob­sessed with pla­cat­ing your party’s base and to be­come con­sumed with hat­ing your op­pon­ent. This cer­tainly isn’t the first time a party has en­gaged in one or both self-de­struct­ive activ­it­ies, and it won’t be the last. The ques­tion is wheth­er the Re­pub­lic­an Party is squan­der­ing the power­ful time-for-a-change dy­nam­ic, which should be work­ing to its ad­vant­age this year, by com­ing across as a party that is un­worthy of be­ing en­trus­ted with all three branches of our fed­er­al gov­ern­ment.