Why Democrats Must Retake Control of the House of Representatives

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). (

As pathetic and hypocrisy-filled as Paul Ryan has been as Speaker of the House of Representatives, his likely successor should Ryan be forced out of the speakership before the end of his term or if Republicans manage to hold control of the House after the midterm elections, would likely be far worse in countless ways.  As one former Republican White House official puts it, Rep. Kevin McCarthy would be a "mindless" Trump sycophant and an out right threat to constitutional government.   As a former Republican myself, McCarthy embodies much of what is wrong with today's Christofascist/white supremacist controlled GOP.  The take away?  It is crucial that Democrats retake control of the House and protect the nation from the likes of McCarthy.  A column in the Washington Post looks at why McCarthy is so dangerous.  Here are excerpts:

On the evidence of House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s CNN interviewover the weekend, the likely next speaker of the House is a mindless sycophant and a threat to the constitutional order.
 Confronted with a simple ethical question — would he condemn demonstrable White House lies in covering up President Trump’s role in drafting his son’s account of the now-infamous 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Russians — McCarthy, a California Republican, was initially dumbstruck, then shifted into a prerecorded attack on special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. It would have been easy enough to say: “The president and his team are hurting themselves with unnecessary falsehoods. Their overall case, however, is strong.” But such is the atmosphere of intimidation in the Republican Party that affirming the Ninth Commandment is seen as an act of disloyalty. When the king is a liar, truth becomes treason.

McCarthy seems to be more of a memory-foam Republican — taking the exact shape of presidential pressure. Ryan was clearly uncomfortable when ignoring his principles. McCarthy seems to view surrender to the president as a matter of principle — as part of the tribal code of the partisan. His is the loyalty of the lap dog, the devotion of the dupe.

This is problematic for at least two reasons. First, Trump and his team are testing the limits of executive power in increasingly bold and reckless ways. . . . Trump and his lawyers are not just asserting presidential freedom of action, but presidential freedom from accountability. . . . This means obstruction of justice by the president is a practical impossibility, because his actions are the definition of justice.

Since, in this view, any violation of federal law by the president (including, according to his lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, the shooting of former FBI director James B. Comey) could be immediately self-pardoned — and any resulting investigation ended on his order — the only relevant legal check during his time in office is impeachment. 

This brings us to the second, less obvious reason McCarthy’s sycophancy is alarming: the strength of the economy. A 3.8 percent unemployment rate — the lowest in 18 years — is good for the country. It also creates an atmosphere in which a leader might grab powers with less dissent. This is precisely what happened in Turkey, where Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s oppressive populism was enabled by strong economic growth. The same might be argued about Venezuela, where Hugo Chávez initially used his nation’s oil wealth to ease the way toward authoritarianism.

American institutions are stronger than those of Turkey or Venezuela. But one reason they are stronger is a balance of institutional power in which the legislature is willing to check the excessive ambitions of the executive branch.

Would McCarthy be willing to play that role as speaker? Consider the scenario in which Republicans narrowly maintain control of the House in November’s midterm elections — which Trump would claim as complete vindication for his approach to governing.

In this environment, will the FBI survive as an independent institution? Will all the corruption of Trump’s campaign team, his White House appointments, his family and his own past business and political dealings be washed away in a flood of self-interested pardons? Will Trump be able to harass and intimidate his enemies in politics, business and the media with impunity?

[Trump]The president has now claimed the entire executive branch as his private fiefdom, and every federal law enforcement official as his personal servant. Would a Speaker McCarthy stand athwart Trumpism yelling “Stop!”? There is no reason to think it.

McCarthy has been a leader in Trump’s troop of enablers. America urgently requires leaders made of sterner stuff.

GOP Leaders Scramble to Kill House Immigration Rebellion

Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy seek to kill debate on immigration reform.

Donald Trump is not the only anti-immigrant Republican.  The entire GOP Congressional leadership opposes meaningful comprehensive immigration reform despite the support for such legislation by a majority of Americans.  Given the majority support of voters, some Republicans in the House facing re-election have filed a discharge petition to force debate on an immigration reform bill.  The move sent the GOP leadership into a panic given that open debate would underscore the anti-immigrant animus of the GOP agenda.  As of yesterday, the GOP leadership was scrambling to kill the rebellion of those in their party who seemingly want to pass legislation that will address the concerns of a majority of voters, not just the white supremist and white Christian nationals of the GOP base.  The Washington Post looks at the frantic effort to stop debate.  Here are article highlights:

House Republican leaders made a full-court press Wednesday to forestall a GOP immigration rebellion that they fear could derail their legislative agenda and throw their effort to hold the majority in doubt.

The effort began in a closed-door morning meeting where Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) warned that a freewheeling immigration debate could have sharp political consequences. It continued in the evening, when the leaders of a petition effort that would sidestep were summoned to a room with House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), McCarthy and three other top leaders.

Their message, according to attendees, was that efforts were underway at the highest levels, including with the White House, to get immigration legislation on the House floor before the midterm elections.

The House leaders presented no firm plan for action at the meeting, and the petition effort will continue, Curbelo and others said afterward.  Reps. John Katko (N.Y.) and David A. Trott (Mich.) became the 19th and 20th Republicans to sign the petition Wednesday. If all 193 Democrats join the petition, five more Republican signatures are needed to force action, which could come as soon as next month. The immigration issue has bedeviled congressional Republicans, with members in swing districts eager to strike a compromise that would legalize “dreamers” — young undocumented immigrants who arrived in the United States as children — while conservatives have been wary of granting anything that could be construed as “amnesty” for lawbreakers, at least not without major policy concessions. McCarthy had a blunter message, according to two members present who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private meeting and as first reported by Politico: Signing the discharge petition and paving the way for passage of a moderate immigration bill could hurt Republicans in November’s elections by depressing conservative turnout and upending leadership’s plans to focus on tax cuts and other GOP successes. Curbelo and Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Calif.), another leader of the discharge effort, responded inside the meeting by recalling months of promises that the House would act. “This is something the American public is demanding,” Denham said in an interview, adding, “I also believe the majority is at stake if we do nothing.”

[T]hey also face pressure from their right flank to block the discharge effort.  Members of the House Freedom Caucus are threatening to hold up passage of a massive farm bill this week unless leaders schedule a vote on a conservative immigration bill co-authored by Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Tex.). 

The discharge petition would set up votes on a series of bills, including the Goodlatte-McCaul bill, which has been written to please conservatives but has languished well short of the majority necessary to pass. Two bipartisan bills are more likely to pass if brought up for a vote, but they are likely to win more support from Democrats than Republicans and could violate the informal GOP leadership rule barring the consideration of bills not supported by a majority of Republicans. Neither includes the wall or visa restrictions that Trump has demanded. Still, the 20 House Republicans who have signed the petition have made clear they are done waiting after years of hoping their party’s leaders would bring some immigration bill — any immigration bill — to the floor. Hours before signing the petition, Trott said his own patience had nearly run out and Congress needed to resolve the uncertainty created by Trump’s cancellation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.  “I didn’t hear a plan today,” he said after leaving the morning meeting. “Time’s running out. We need to do something.”

What a refreshing concept: passing legislation that the public wants, not just pandering to right wing extremists and open racists.  Let's hope the discharge effort is successful.

2016: House Majority Leader Says "I Think Putin Pays Trump"

The vast majority of Congressional Republicans willingly sold their souls to Donald Trump in their quest to put their party over the best interests of America.  Seemingly, positioning themselves to give a trillion dollar tax cut to the wealthy outweighed all else.  The result was that they backed a morally bankrupt, narcissistic liar and serial sexual predator despite reservations about Trump's possible allegiance to Vladimir Putin.  The best interests and welfare of the majority of Americans simply did not matter.  Now, a tape of a conversation between House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and House Speaker Paul Ryan has come to light in which McCarthy states that he believes that Trump was on Putin's payroll.  After initially lying and claiming the conversation never happened, Ryan and McCarthy are trying to say it was all a joke.  Sadly, what they have foisted on America is no joke and the nation and the world are now threatened by the sociopath in the White House.  The Washington Post looks at Ryan - in my view one of the most despicable and amoral men in Washington - being caught trying to lie about this and how he puts party above country.  Here are excerpts:

A month before Donald Trump clinched the Republican nomination, one of his closest allies in Congress — House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy — made a politically explosive assertion in a private conversation on Capitol Hill with his fellow GOP leaders: that Trump could be the beneficiary of payments from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” McCarthy (R-Calif.) said, according to a recording of the June 15, 2016, exchange, which was listened to and verified by The Washington Post. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher is a Californian Republican known in Congress as a fervent defender of Putin and Russia.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) immediately interjected, stopping the conversation from further exploring McCarthy’s assertion, and swore the Republicans present to secrecy.

Before the conversation, McCarthy and Ryan had emerged from separate talks at the U.S. Capitol with Ukrainian Prime Minister Vladi­mir Groysman, who had described a Kremlin tactic of financing populist politicians to undercut Eastern European democratic institutions.

News had just broken the day before in The Washington Postthat Russian government hackers had penetrated the computer network of the Democratic National Committee, prompting McCarthy to shift the conversation from Russian meddling in Europe to events closer to home.

Some of the lawmakers laughed at McCarthy’s comment. Then McCarthy quickly added: “Swear to God.”

Ryan instructed his Republican lieutenants to keep the conversation private, saying: “No leaks. . . . This is how we know we’re a real family here.” The remarks remained secret for nearly a year.

The conversation provides a glimpse at the internal views of GOP leaders who now find themselves under mounting pressure over the conduct of President Trump. The exchange shows that the Republican leadership in the House privately discussed Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election and Trump’s relationship to Putin, but wanted to keep their concerns secret. It is difficult to tell from the recording the extent to which the remarks were meant to be taken literally.

Evan McMullin, who in his role as policy director to the House Republican Conference participated in the June 15 conversation, said: “It’s true that Majority Leader McCarthy said that he thought candidate Trump was on the Kremlin’s payroll. Speaker Ryan was concerned about that leaking.” McMullin ran for president last year as an independent and has been a vocal critic of Trump.

When initially asked to comment on the exchange, Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Ryan, said: “That never happened,” and Matt Sparks, a spokesman for McCarthy, said: “The idea that McCarthy would assert this is absurd and false.”

After being told that The Post would cite a recording of the exchange, Buck, speaking for the GOP House leadership, said: “This entire year-old exchange was clearly an attempt at humor. 

 I guess Ryan's idea of being a "family" is akin to a Mafia family.  The man is a liar and reprehensible.  He is just as dishonest as Trump. 

Benghazi Committe Backfires: Support for Hillary Grows

Many have argued - and some Republicans have slipped up and admitted - that the GOP lead House Benghazi Committee was a political witch hunting from the very beginning with only one goal: to damage Hillary Clinton.  A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal Survey seems to indicate that more Americans now see the Committee's hearings for what they really have always been.  The result? Hillary Clinton has seen a rise in support even as more view the Benghazi Committee as nakedly partisan and seeking to to impact the likely Democrat presidential nominee.  Here are highlights from Politicususa.com: 

The new NBC News/Wall Street Journal Survey contains some great news for Hillary Clinton. Since her appearance in front of the Benghazi Select Committee, there has been a nine-point swing in her favor on the issue of her emails.

According to the survey, before her Benghazi committee testimony, 47% of those polled said that Clinton’s emails were an important factor in deciding whether or not to support her, and 44% said the emails were not an important factor. After Clinton’s testimony, 48% believed that the emails were not an important factor, and 42% said they were. There was also a five point increase in the number of respondents who thought the Benghazi investigation is unfair and partisan. 

The NBC News poll reveals that having Hillary Clinton testify in front of the House Benghazi Select Committee was a major mistake by the Republican Party The hearing gave Clinton a platform and allowed her to turn public opinion on her emails in her favor. Republicans thought they would use the high-profile hearing to stop Hillary Clinton. Instead, they shot themselves in the feet.

According to all the recent polling, Clinton is a stronger presidential candidate today than she was before she testified in front of the Benghazi Committee. She now leads in every early state and nationally. Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) gave Clinton a surge in momentum when he admitted that the Benghazi Select Committee was a partisan political stunt.

A hearing that was supposed to yield talking points and thirty-second campaign ads for the Republican side has rallied Democrats around their frontrunner and put her on a steady march towards the White House. 

Ex-GOP Staffer: Benghazi Panel on Partisan Mission to Destroy Hillary

First Kevin McCarthy slipped up and made it clear that the real mission of the GOP organized Committee conducting hearings on Benghazi is to destroy Hillary Clinton. Now, a former GOP staffer who has left working for the committee has confirmed McCarthy's slip up and confirmed that the Republican majority is conducting a politically motivated probe of Hillary Clinton.  Truth be told, the GOP doesn't give a rat's ass about Benghazi except as a vehicle to destroy Hillary who they see as the main presidential rival for whichever occupant of the GOP candidate clown car ultimate gains the GOP nomination.  A piece in Politico looks at the statements of Major Bradley Podliska who was fired because of his refusal to engage in the partisan with hunt. Here are highlights:

An ex-GOP investigator for the House Select Committee on Benghazi says the Republican majority is conducting a politically motivated probe of Hillary Clinton.

Major Bradley Podliska, who was fired from the committee in June after about 10 months on the job, told CNN the panel has veered off its original course to investigate the Sept. 11, 2012 attack that left four Americans dead — instead zeroing in on Clinton following news that she used private email while Secretary of State.

The segment, to be broadcast on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday, is sure to feed the partisan fire surrounding the committee, which has been on defense for more than a week after comments Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) made suggesting the committee’s work has hurt Clinton on the 2016 campaign trail, where she is the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination.

A GOP Benghazi panel spokesman in a statement called Podliska's allegations “transparently false.”

The Air Force Reserve intelligence officer, who told CNN that he himself is a Republican, said he’s planning to file a lawsuit against the panel next month for wrongful termination after “resisting pressure to focus his investigative efforts solely on the State Department and Clinton's role surrounding the Benghazi attack," reads a CNN preview. 

He also alleges he was fired for taking time off the job to fulfill his military duties.

"I was fired for going on military service and I was fired for trying to conduct an objective, non-partisan, thorough investigation," Podliska will say, according to the CNN preview.

Podliska will say his firing had more to do with his unwillingness to focus his probe solely on Clinton and State — something the panel says it’s not doing — and a leave of absence he took to fulfill military service obligations. 

Podliska told CNN he was only now talking about the matter because of the panel’s continued focus on Clinton.

"I'm scared. I'm nervous. I know that this is, you know, I'm going up against powerful people in Washington. But at the end of the day I need to live with myself," he is quoted saying in the CNN report. "I told my wife, I will view myself as a coward if I don't do the right thing here."

Obviously, the GOP committee members have every reason to be lying.  For Podliska, the benefits are far less obvious.

The GOP's Self-Created Chaos

Reactions to Kevin McCarthy's surprise removal of himself from consideration to be the next Speaker of the House continue.  The biggest issues and reflections are (i) who can possibly restore order, if not sanity, to the Republican Party, and (ii) how did the GOP become so insane and out of ouch with reality.  It seems that there is some consensus - at least outside of the GOP - that the party establishment bears responsibility.  Most however, refrain from getting at the real root cause: the empowerment of the Christofascists and evangelical Christians in the Republican Party.  When I resigned from the Virginia Beach City Committee, I stated that until the party once again honored the concept of the separation of church and state, I could not be a member of the GOP.  In the intervening years, things have only gotten worse.  With the rise of white evangelicals and Christian extremists, we have seen the attendant rise and acceptance of racism and white supremacy within the GOP (the "Tea Party" is merely a label to hide the real nature of the insane party base).   What is frightening is that there seems to be no way to stop the metastasizing cancer that these people represent.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the GOP's self-destruction as a serious political party.  Here are excerpts:

At this point, I worry we’re going to start finding members of the Republican establishment curled up in their beds, eyes clenched shut and ears covered with trembling hands, moaning “make it stop, make it stop, make it stop.” 

Pity their suffering, but remember that they brought it on themselves.

The insurrection that propelled billionaire Donald Trump into the lead for the GOP nomination and ultimately made House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) surrender his gavel in frustration rages on unabated. This was no mere summer skirmish. If anything, the rebellion is gaining strength.

It is dawning on the party grandees that their most recent predictions of Trump’s demise, like earlier ones, were wrong.

And there is a reason for Trump’s success that goes beyond his skill at burnishing his personal brand: He is saying what much of the GOP base wants to hear. 

The party establishment has only itself to blame. From the moment President Obama took office, Republicans in Congress have been selling the base a bill of goods. They demonized Obamacare and cynically swore to repeal it, knowing they could not. They balked at sensible immigration reform, deciding instead to do nothing. They engaged in Pyrrhic brinkmanship over the budget and the debt ceiling, fully aware that in the end they would have to back down.

Promising to do the impossible was an effective short-term strategy for raising money and winning midterm elections. But if you keep firing up your supporters and letting them down, they become disillusioned. They begin to think the problem might not be Obama and the Democrats. It might be you.

That same dynamic is happening in the House, where Boehner’s decision to walk away has emboldened, not chastened, the ultraconservative revolutionaries in the GOP ranks.

In the Democratic Party, the conflict is ideological — left vs. center-left. In the GOP, the struggle looks existential. 

Put another way, it’s not hard to imagine a party in which there’s room for both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, and you can easily imagine one supporting the other as standard-bearer. But a tent that can hold, say, both Trump’s view on undocumented immigrants — hunt them down and kick them out — and Bush’s support for compassionate reform? That’s not a political party, it’s a food fight.

The Republican establishment may ultimately find some way to drag one of its presidential candidates through the primaries. But chaos, Trump has shown, is the GOP’s new normal.

The GOP Sinks Deeper into Chaos

As I have said before, the Republican Party has become an insane asylum under the control of the patients, many of who suffer from severe delusions and detachment from objective reality.  With John Boehner's unexpected announcement last month that he was resigning as Speaker of the House of Representatives, many thought that Kevin McCarthy - not one of my favorite people - would succeed Boehner.  Now, McCarthy has thrown the GOP into chaos by his sudden announcement that he would be withdrawing his name from consideration.  Whether McCarthy changed his mind after realizing that he's suffer the same difficulties as Boehner, feeling that his honesty about the true nature of the House Benghazi committee was toxic, or knew that some other bombshell might be forthcoming, his withdrawal has left the lunatic right rejoicing and less insane Republicans fearful of what may yet be to come.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the batshitery reigning supreme in the GOP.  Here are highlights:

Less than a year after a sweeping electoral triumph, Republicans are on the verge of ceasing to function as a national political party.

The most powerful and crippling force at work in the ­once-hierarchical GOP is anger, directed as much at its own leaders as anywhere else.

First, a contingent of several dozen conservative House members effectively forced Speaker John A. Boehner (Ohio) to resign rather than face a possibly losing battle to hold on to his job. Now they have claimed House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), who had been considered the favorite to replace Boehner until he announced Thursday that he is dropping out of the race.

With no obvious replacement for Boehner in sight, “it is total confusion — a banana republic,” said Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.). “Any plan, anything you anticipate — who knows what’ll happen? People are crying, they don’t have any idea how this will unfold, at all.”

Parallel currents of rage and chaos have been roiling the 2016 presidential race, diminishing hopes that an eventual nominee can bring order and direction to the increasingly dysfunctional party.

But government experience has become a liability for Republicans, rather than a credential. Celebrity billionaire Donald Trump, the leader in every poll, has rallied the conservative base by mocking the entire GOP establishment as weak and feckless. Many of the other candidates have followed his lead.

The forces that have made the House ungovernable are coming from the same wellspring of insurgency, beginning with the tea party movement, that propelled the Republicans back into control of Congress.

Battalions of conservative ground troops have come to Capitol Hill in the past five years with expectations that were not in line with what could actually be achieved while there is still a Democrat in the White House.

Disappointed in their ability to follow through on their campaign promises to turn back President Obama’s policies, they trained their fire on their own commanders.

For all their gains on the state and local level, Republicans are deepening the problems that have cost them the popular vote in all but one of the last six presidential elections. The divisive and exclusionary rhetoric of their 2016 contenders has hit a chord with primary voters . . . .
but threatens to further alienate key groups of voters in an increasingly diverse country.

Their contempt for compromise has also undermined the Republicans’ drive to prove that they can actually govern.  

Junior members of Congress no longer have to seek the favor of more senior ones to rise through the ranks. Modern media has given them the power to play to a national audience — as presidential contender and first-term senator Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) has demonstrated in the Senate.

In July, Cruz went so far as to call Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) a liar on the floor of the Senate. Such a breach of decorum would have been unthinkable in earlier times, but it has burnished Cruz’s image with the conservative base.

At the Obama White House, officials were not gloating at the Republican turmoil — in part, because it could pose problems for carrying out their own agenda. For instance, the president is going to have to rely on a large number of GOP votes to pass a Pacific Rim free-trade deal that is drawing opposition from Obama’s own party.

Candidly, I do not know how the Christofascists and Tea Party (a euphemism in my view for Christofascists and white supremacists) can be brought under control .  They are simply crazy and logic and reason - and objective reality - get nowhere with them.  The GOP establishment allowed them to hijack the party base and now the price may be the ultimate death of the GOP.

Hillary and the GOP's Big Benghazi Mistake

The right wing Republican hearings in the House of Representatives on Benghazi have always been a witch hunt intended to damage Barack Obama and, perhaps more importantly, Hillary Clinton, whom the GOP sees as the most likely opponent of whatever political whore/charlatan the GOP manages to nominate as its standard bearer in 2016.  But even if this has been the reality, it is not good politics to admit it.  Yet that is precisely what would be House Speaker Kevin McCarthy did last week.  Now, both Hillary Clinton and other Democrats are jumping on the admission and are calling out the GOP.  Indeed, in a new ad, Hillary that calls the Benghazi hearings and the e-mail server story line as nothing more than political hatchet jobs aimed at harming her political standing.  A column in the Washington Post looks at this gift from McCarthy to Clinton and Democrats.  Here are excerpts:

When House speaker-in-waiting Kevin McCarthy claimed credit for the decline in Hillary Clinton's poll numbers because House Republicans had formed a congressional committee investigating the attacks in Benghazi, Libya, I knew it was a bad political mistake. I may have underestimated just how bad.

Consider how Clinton responded to a question about her private e-mail server during a New Hampshire townhall hosted by NBC's "Today" show co-host Savannah Guthrie on Monday:

"This committee was set up, as they have admitted, for the purpose of making a partisan political issue out of the deaths of four Americans," she said. "I would never have done that, and if I were president and there were Republicans or Democrats thinking about that, I would have done everything to shut it down."

Throughout the interview, Clinton referenced McCarthy's comments — made during a contentious interview with Fox News Channel's Sean Hannity — as a means to do something she's been unable to do ever since the e-mail story broke in March: Play offense.

She's impassioned and right on the edge of anger. Anger is, of course, not always a good thing for politicians.  But in this case, it shows Clinton at her best: Partisan, passionate and convincing.

[W]hile the Benghazi committee was aware that Clinton was the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, the GOP leadership had been very careful to frame it as simply a fact-finding effort that happened to include the former secretary of state.

McCarthy, of course, changed all that with his comments to Hannity. What McCarthy said doesn't mean that the who, what, when, where and why of Clinton's exclusive use of a private e-mail server while at the State department isn't still an issue for her. What it does mean though is that she now has a way to change the subject — or at least the terrain on which she is fighting.

That all changed with McCarthy's comments.  Now, Clinton can do exactly what she did in New Hampshire n Monday morning: Quickly acknowledge her error then turn to the "real" issue, which is how Republicans are exploiting the deaths of four Americans for their own political gain. That narrative — coupled with Clinton's passion for it — is a winner, or as close as she can get to it on an issue that has caused tons of problems for her campaign. 

It's possible that this past five days or so is simply a blip in the broader context of the campaign and the Clinton-plays-defense storyline will reassert itself. But, the Clinton team thinks that McCarthy has handed them a massive political gift, and I tend to agree.

Clinton is not the only Democrat jumping on the band wagon that the GOP has foolishly provided.  As MSNBC reports, others are now sounding off.  Here are highlights:

It’s always interesting to see what happens when a charade ends. For quite a while, congressional Republicans tried to keep up appearances, pretending their Benghazi committee was a legitimate, non-partisan search for truth – a claim no one, anywhere, seriously believed – but House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) accidental candor last week ripped off the mask.

The Washington Post reported this morning:

Democrats are taking the unprecedented step of releasing excerpts from a closed-session interview the House Benghazi committee conducted last month with Hillary Clinton aide Cheryl Mills, accusing the panel’s Republican Chairman Trey Gowdy (S.C.) of selectively leaking information to damage Clinton in the presidential race.

In a letter signed by all five Democratic members of the panel, the lawmakers told Gowdy, “It has become obvious that the only way to adequately correct the public record is to release the complete transcript of the Committee’s interview with Ms. Mills…. [W]e plan to begin the process of correcting the public record by releasing the transcript of Ms. Mills’ interview. Since you have indicated your unwillingness to do this in a bipartisan manner, we plan to do so ourselves.”

They have the transcript – the whole thing, not excerpts edited by Republicans to advance a partisan agenda – and they want the public to have it, too. 

I’m not entirely sure what, if anything, Gowdy can do at this point to (a) keep the truth shielded from public view; and (b) punish the Democrats on his committee for going around him.

 

But as the masquerade ends and the Benghazi committee is exposed as the partisan exercise it has always been, the politics surrounding the scheme are clearly intensifying.