A Pyrrhic Victory on Benghazi

Republicans in Congress need to ensure they do not win the battle at the cost of the overall good of their party. Let’s look at things realistically; most Americans, and almost all the media, don’t care about the semantics and the deceit that the Administration put forth in the days and months after the September 11^th 2012 attacks in Benghazi.  Outside of the conservative echo chamber, very few people care, it is sad but true. People that I have discussions with believe that the President and his administration tried to hide the true nature of the attacks in order to keep the President looking strong on terrorism for the November election. Most are willing to forgive and forget as long as security has been raised and these mistakes don’t happen again.

Thanks in a large part to the whistleblowers and Sharyl Attkisson, @sharylattkisson, we have learned the Administration did indeed try to convince the American people that the attacks were not based on Islamic extremists’ intentions to destroy the US but to pass it off as a spontaneous reaction to an internet based movie trailer. Attkisson published a story earlier that detailed the changes made to the talking points to soften the blow of four dead Americans. This is a huge story but unfortunately the narrative has already been written on this point, and the truth has lost out. It’s time to move on.

It’s only time to move on because there are bigger and more important issues that have come to light in the last few days. The IRS story keeps getting bigger and bigger every day. What were initially reports of a few low level employees in Cincinnati has now turned to higher level players in Washington. Conservative groups, Jewish groups and several others have come forward to state that they have been harassed by the IRS. Now even a liberal group,  ProPublica, has come forward saying that the IRS gave them unapproved applications which are not legally available until they have been approved for tax-exempt status. This is the story that has legs and which could potentially bring the most discredit to the Obama Administration.

Yes the facts must come out of Benghazi and they will in time but the IRS and possible the AP scandals are where the Republicans in Congress must center their efforts if they wish to win this war. The American people will forgive someone who was trying to mislead them but they are not willing to allow elected members of government to use their positions and the powers of their offices to torment their political opponents. Just ask Nixon.

Will it be this man that turns the Media against his boss?