Mighty Like A Ruse: Welcome to Whitewater 2.0

The dancing was desperate, the music was worse
They bury your dreams and dig up the worthless

Remember back when the exact GPS coordinates Bill Clinton's naughty bits was somehow as bad or maybe worse than Nixon's systematic demolition of the United States constitution in order to carry out political vendettas and destroy anyone he perceived as his enemy?

No?

Well it really happened.  That was the actual verdict rendered by the late "Dean" of the insulated, inbred tribe of Very Serious People whose opinions set the terms of every public discussion of anything:

"Clinton's behavior is truly Nixonian. And it is worse in one way. Nixon's actions, however neurotic and criminal, were motivated by and connected to the exercise of presidential power. He knew the place he occupied, and he was determined not to give it up to those he regarded as 'enemies.' Clinton acted--and still, even in his supposed mea culpa, acts--as if he does not recognize what it means to be president of the United States."

-- David Broder, Washington Post (8/19/98)

But if you are too young or too Republican to remember those halcyon days of yore when shadowy wingnut billionaires stalked the land, deploying their paid slander-trolls and counter-jumpers in the media and in Congress for an all-out/knives-out campaign to destroy a Democratic president, don't sweat it!  Because the sewer-dwellers of Party of Jefferson Davis have saddled up their Fake High Dudgeon to rerun the  entire Whitewater/Vince Foster/Monica Lewinsky 1990s all over again.

Except, of course, this time for all of their howling and taxpayer-funded witch-hunts, they're not even going to come up with a stained blue dress.

Five or six years from now, when the Benghaaaazi Freakshow is the rear-view mirror and a few of the braver members of the Washington press corps dare to opine that maybe the GOP went a little too far, it will be clear that all of their sound and fury came to nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

And just like the 1990s, foreknowledge that this is nothing but another ;pile of steaming, Republican treachery served with a side of fraud will not deter them in the slightest, because as the continued public existence of  treason-mongers like David Brooks and Bill Kristol and Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh continues to demonstrate, there are never, ever any consequences for Conservatives lying, no matter how grotesque the lie or lethal the consequences.  Which is Crazy Uncle Liberty and all of his dear friends in elected office and in the media will Just Keep Shouting Benghaaazi Louder until something breaks, or someone gets killed, or they get a head or two on a pike.  Because as this outstanding summary by Karoli over at Crooks and Liars shows, every bit of this latest Republican ratfuckfest has been staged-managed from the start:

Boehner Announces Select Committee On Benghazi To Satisfy Restless Donors

By karoli May 3, 2014 7:00 am

Friday afternoon, Speaker John Boehner announced that he would appoint a select committee on Benghazi. It's no surprise -- they've been planning to do it for at least a year.

Speaker John Boehner announced Friday afternoon that he will appoint a select committee to further investigate Benghazi. Not because there's anything there to investigate, you understand, but as Ed Henry admits in the video, it keeps their base frothing at the mouth.

This is no surprise. It was planned exactly one year ago when narratives were formed in order to push Darrell Issa and John Boehner into appointing a select committee with subpoena power to gin up the base and paper the White House with meaningless subpoenas for the next three years.

One Year Ago, a Groundswell

On May 8, 2013, the online conservative "messaging" group known as Groundswell convened their weekly meeting in Washington, DC.

First up on the agenda was Benghazi, and the question of when they would get their select committee with subpoena power. This was so important to Groundswell's leadership that they forced late-night meetings with John Boehner and Darrell Issa. From the transcript of the recording:

Um, Frank [Gaffney] and I had -- I'm sorry -- Frank and I actually had meetings last night with Speaker Boehner and Representative Issa also. We've been pushing with the support of Congressman Wolf as well as Congressman Gohmert for a special committee. And I think it's okay to share with you, wouldn't you say so Frank, that the Speaker was, I thought he was very coherent last night when we talked about this. And that he believes that the process needs to play out before we get a special committee. His concern is that the media will portray this as just simply an attempt to bring down the Obama administration, until their current committee system plays itself out.

He continues:

Again, the key takeaway here is we're not backing away from a special committee, we're still pushing for that. But we kind of have a pledge from both, I think Issa and the Speaker, that they want the system to play out a little more before they start to call for that. The Speaker did say he's not opposed to it but he wants to let the committee structure as it stands right now continue until it would potentially merit bringing a special committee.

...