Ichabod's Kin
A place for politics, pop culture, and social issues

English: President George W. Bush with Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld outside the Oval Office. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

    Republicans believe that God loves them again. Having lost all foothold on their anti-Obama attacks since his re-election, and staring at the chance of a mid-term electoral disaster, along came some red meat not even of their making.
    Well, the Benghazi smear is their creation, given that it was all they had–before the IRS soiled itself and loose cannons went after journalists including, oh, dear me, some at Fox News. The last two goofs were like manna from heaven, and conservatives have made a gourmet (gormand?) feast of them. But these gifts are full of holes; as Ali said to George Foreman at the Thrilla in Manila, “Is that it, George? Is that all you got?” And this is all theGOP and their Tea Party has got, and it ain’t enough.
    Given their penchant for illogic, the rhetoric goes like this: all the sins of the American right-wing are hereby erased from the Book of Bad. Obama is again the devil incarnate and his religion, birth certificate and Americanism are back on the table. And all that is properly “under investigation, ” totheir minds are confirmed “scandals,” no if, ands, or buts. And the word scandal means, “they’re all Obama’s fault and he should be impeached for them.”
    Never mentioned by their blame-stream press is that among those on the IRS hot seat is a Bush holdover, but, hey, never mind. What else is unmentioned is that they undoubtedly know that  all of this is going to go away. But they’ll make the most of it before it does. Not that it won’t be long and drawn out, but when all is said and done there will be nothing but gossamer punching bags. Whatever loss of self-image is suffered by Obama, the American public will either forgive or just decide to forget. That’s not just politics for you, it’s the way Americans treat prezes they otherwise like.
    We forget that other than the avuncular and even grandfatherly image Reagan that had with the populace, there were many points of dislike of his decisions and policies. His poll ratings sank to dangerous lows and a major financial crisis (at the time, the worst since the Great Depression) came during his tenure. Another Republican, George W, gave us a worse economic scare but Obama is trimming down that problem.
    What is lost among the GOP gush of self-righteousness are the silly, stupid things said by folks like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld–that the current brouhaha is the worst thing they’ve seen in their political careers. That is, if you pretend to forget all about 9/11. Peggy Noonan, Reagan’s speech writer, recently played that card but Jon Stewart trumped it on his Daily Show with some reminders of what went on while Peg was serving the Gipper.
    If Benghazi was all the GOP had, that too would be worth looking at but hardly the way they think. Assaults on American presence in foreign lands have been steady and numerous for years, and with far more casualties. Every day we get to hear John McCain’s mantra that “four brave dead Americans” died at Benghazi but I count ten attacks under Bush at both consulates and embassies: two each in Karachi and Yemen and singletons at Islamabad, Istanbul, Kolkata, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Tashkent, from early 2002 to 2008 for a total of 60 casualties. May I add that the number of outraged Republicans at the time was: zero. And Bush got re-elected.
    Reagan was much more economical; he multiplied Bush’s losses in one fell swoop. In his second year in office, U.S. Marines in Beirut suffered 241 losses in a single blow. For that, Obama would be impeached and convicted before being hanged, drawn and quartered. But not Ronnie, and for that he had Democrats to thank as well.
    Reagan decided to tell a story, i.e., a narrative, walking his audience through what happened from beginning to end, hoping the American public might sympathize with the administration’s vulnerability in the face of the unexpected. Here is where we must jump ahead to Hillary Clinton’s appearance before Congress when she said, regarding Benghazi, that we had to take our lessons from what happened and from what can’t be changed, and move on.
    Oh, the outrage! How could she so cavalierly pass off all that tragedy? Now back to Reagan. That’s essentially what he said to us after Beirut. The difference was he wasn’t hauled before Congress where the opposition party could spit on his every remark. He said it in a speech to the nation. And when he did, people, including Democrats and their leaders, said: Okay, got it, let’s move on.
    I suggest we keep our heads now, while others are losing theirs.