A coalition of dumb people and crazy people

by | Oct 23, 2015 | 2016 Elections, Editor's Blog, UNC | 15 comments

Yesterday proved that the Republican Party has been taken over by a coalition of crazy people and dumb people and funded by rich people who got more than they bargained for. The Benghazi Committee was better off in print than on television. It’s clearly made up of a bunch of people who have connected dots that don’t actually connect. Every time one of them thought  he or she was looking smart, Hillary Clinton made them out to be the fools they are.

For her part, Clinton needs to get in front of inquisitors more often. Her debate performance followed by yesterday’s circus highlighted her obvious intelligence and made her look far more credible and serious than anyone on the GOP side. At a time when she was supposed to be on the defensive, Politico called it “Her best week yet.”

For its part, the Benghazi Committee lost what little credibility it had. Combined with their inability to find a House Speaker, the House GOP looks like a dysfunctional group of children who clearly shouldn’t be making decisions that affect the whole country. What’s even more disturbing is watching their supporters on Twitter declare victory in the wake of the hearing yesterday.

In North Carolina, we’ve been watching this show for years. Currently the dysfunction is playing out in their sadly comical and destructive attempt to find a new president of the university system. Like chairman is an incompetent leader who has problems with the truth. At the same time, ideologues and conspiracy theorists appointed to the board are attacking the process, leaving reporters and pundits with a field day.

Ironically, the chairman, John Fennebresque, may be the sane one in the crowd. He’s clearly ham-handed in his handling of the board but he might be trying to outflank his tin-foil hat caucus who have fantasies of breaking up the system or privatizing it. Forcing the vote on former Secretary of Education Margaret Spelling might be his way of keeping the university out of the hands of candidates who would be more susceptible political pressure or manipulation. As Rob Christensen astutely noted, “Dealing with conservative cowboys is old hat for Spellings. Maybe that is what the legislature is worried about.”

Smart Republicans should be embarrassed. Instead of blaming a biased media, they need to step back and see how silly their leaders look. After the Speaker debacle, Donald Trump and Ben Carson, and what’s happened in North Carolina, the GOP no longer gets the benefit of the doubt. It’s up to them to prove that they can govern. So far, they’ve failed miserably.

15 Comments

  1. cosmicjanitor

    Hillary Rodham Clinton is a bold faced liar; anyone foolish enough to support her as a presidential candidate has their head stuck in the sand. As US. Secretary of State, she was a prominent player in the Libya fiasco, which was a veiled war-crime carried out by the Western Coalition that cries out for a transparent international investigation, and which has lead to a failed state and a humanitarian crisis of untold proportions. Mrs. Clinton hasn’t the slightest remorse for her actions in regards to this criminal US. military adventurism that has devastated the once prosperous country of Libya, nor has she the slightest remorse for her recent support of US. intentions to bomb and ravage the sovereign state of Syria – which is yet another in a long line of US. foreign policy mis-adventures necessitated by global capitalism’s ever desirous need to expand its destructive tentacles.

    • Apply Liberally

      So, after over 1100 days, 7 Congressional investigations (including one by the GOP-chaired House Intelligence Committee), 32 hearings, at least $20M spent, over 70K pages of documentation gone through,11 published reports, and not a single finding of wrongdoing, you still call her a remorseless liar and failure. Amazing……………

    • Someone from Main Street

      The amount of money the GOP has spent investigating the Clintons is astronomical and appalling.

      Too bad GOP never investigated the many American deaths under the “watchful” eyes of Bush/Cheney. Nor did they speak up when billions of dollars went missing in Iraq during Bush years. Shame on them!!!

    • gary

      And GWB seems to have NO remorse about the thousands of US soldiers killed or maimed for life for his insane decision to invade Iraq, so now we have ISIS. While he lives the good life on his ranch, where he spend most of his presidency, Clinton is doing humanitarian work around the world. I lost two very good friends thanks to Dubya, the biggest lier ever.

  2. Morris

    I agree the hearings didn’t yield much of anything – for either side. The hour or so I watched (I realize it was 10+ hours, but most of us do have a life), certainly didn’t make Clinton look all that intelligent to me – and definitely didn’t make her seem more trustworthy. Something she needs to get my vote.
    What would have been refreshing would have been for Clinton to actually tell us what the heck happened, really happened.
    *what was really going on there that required a US ambassador to be in that particularly dangerous part of Libya?
    *why was the security so subpar especially concerning the significance of the date and prior chatter?
    *why didn’t we at least try to help in the many hours that the siege took place? Sure it would have been tough but not counting carriers, we have large Naval assets in Sigonella – a short flight away. After all we did get a drone there before the fight was over.
    *Who ordered the stand down? Clinton wouldn’t have had that authority.

    We lost an ambassador. That’s a big deal. I’m not BLAMING Clinton like the Republicans want us to. But you can’t tell me as Secretary of State, she was as “in the dark” as she claimed to be yesterday. If that’s the case competence and intelligence have to be questioned.
    For the first time in a presidential race since I cast my first vote for Carter in ’76, I’m debating sitting this one out. I do not trust Clinton, and I can’t vote for Trump. Sad damn place we find ourselves if this is the best we’ve got.

    • Norma Munn

      You did not listen long enough. There was no order to “stand down” by anyone — a question already put to rest by other investigations, by the way. As for the rest of the questions, they were answered. FYI, the first attack on the compound (not a consulate, nor an embassy) lasted barely an hour. The second attack took place couple of hours later and was on the CIA outpost, which was supposed to serve also as a safe house for any State Dept personnel at the compound. Had you listened longer, or read prior reports, your questions are all answered. You may not like the answers; many don’t, but the answers are there — mostly from Clinton, but also the CIA and the Pentagon.

    • A. D. Reed

      Morris: Maybe you should have watched the hearing in full, instead of only 9% of it. She answered all your questions. Including the fact–as confirmed by every other investigation of what went wrong–that THERE WAS NO STAND-DOWN.

      • TbeT

        A.D: Exactly!

  3. lyg

    Linda, saying “Republicans don’t think Democrats are the enemy…” is unfortunately not true of several of the Republican presidential candidates and party leaders (see Ted Cruz, Mitch McConnell, Bobby Jindal, etc.).

  4. JT

    TM: Slow Down. Calm down. All this behavior you described is indeed infuriating and must not be ignored. However engaging in name calling (“tin-foil hat caucus”) just does not advance the debate. Incendiary tactics to “energize” the base is what has gotten us in this fix. Let’s try something else.

  5. Linda

    The biggest difference between Democrats and Republicans is the way we see each other. Republicans don’t think Democrats are the enemy they just think they are wrong on the issues. Democrats think Republicans are the enemy and are crazy/nuts/evil/stupid/etc.

    • Mooser

      Oh please! Go onto the comments section on practically any news website, and you’ll see Republicans engaging in the most vicious name-calling imaginable. They aren’t “disagreeing on the issues.” They are rabid, vicious, and downright out of control. They don’t think Democrats are the enemy? Are you kidding? They have demonized President Obama at every turn. Even on the White House facebook page, which posts rather mundane pictures and feel-good stories, the haters come out in full force. It’s disgusting.

    • A. D. Reed

      Linda: to quote my friend Carol, Bwaaaaahahahahahah!

      Most of us–Democrats–don’t think Republicans are our enemy; we have lots of evidence that Republicans are the enemy of democracy and a strong middle class and economic equity.
      Nor do I–I can’t speak for other Democrats on this question–believe that Republicans are “crazy/nuts/evil/stupid/etc.” I know a few Republicans, and they are not evil.

  6. Tom Hill

    I don’t think the marathon hearing changed anybody’s opinion one way or the other. Who was going to listen to all that same-old, same-old? But the Republicans are missing the boat. (No surprise here.) The issue is not Benghazi, but our failed foreign policies in the Arab nations. Not content with destroying the power structure in Iraq under Doofus Bush, Hillary pushed for intervention in Libya, which has resulted in chaos in that country. Bernie (who has been criticized as “weak in foreign policy”) should champion the truth that neither the supposed “experts in foreign policy” under Bush or those under Obama/Hillary have a clue about what they are doing. They would have trouble finding the bathroom at a foreign policy conference.

  7. Apply Liberally

    As the Kennedy-Nixon TV debates proved (yes, I am THAT old), perception plays a big role in how viewers perceive winners and losers in federal politics. In that final hour of the hearings, there was Gowdy, raising his voice, asking questions like a frustrated prosecutor, cutting off answers he didn’t like/want, getting tongue-tied within the minutia of his own circular and hypothetical queries, with the sweat amassing on his brow and burning the camera lens with its glistening reflection. And, then, there’s HRC, cool, calm, sipping a beverage now and again, and, when she could get a word in edgewise, answering intelligently and/or putting the question to shame.

    As one journalist mentioned, if you hate Hillary, you think she was evasive, and if you like her, you think she answered squarely and crushed her political opposition. But the key thing is that she did nothing to hurt her candidacy and, by all indications, helped it by coming off as a responsible adult, and an intelligent, compassionate and experience public servant worthy of being her party’s nominee.

    I paint things here in political terms, because let’s face it, the Benghazi Hearings are simply partisan politics, as a few key Republican representatives and former committee staff have already admitted, and as the timing of the hearings, the committee’s selection of testifiers, and release of only heavily edited versions of selected testimony so clearly suggest.

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