The Trouble With Scandals is They're Not About Truth

     For the GOP the current alleged "Obama Scandals" are about trying to harm the President, bring him down if possible, or at the least, severely damage his agenda. For the Beltway media who has been playing up the scandal  absurd proportions, it's about tribal insecurities, and the need for relevance. 

    They like to think that they can destroy a President. Of course, the Clinton years didn't really prove that theory as his approval ratings got higher the more they squawked about Whitewater and Lewinskygate.

    http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-beltway-media-very-sadistic-people.html

    That this is not about truth but some kind of psychological issues among the Washington media is underscored well by Most Serious Person in Washington, the Most Serious of Them All-Bob Woodward. The last we heard of him, he felt terribly "threatened" by an email he received- the White House sent him an apology letter.

   Woodward now claims that Benghazi is on the level of Watergate-or at least it could be. 

    "“I have it to go back 40 years to Watergate when Nixon put out his edited transcripts of the conversations and he personally went through them and said ‘Let’s not tell this, Let’s not show this,’” Woodward said of the editing process for the talking points. “I would not dismiss Benghazi. It’s a very serious issue. As people keep saying, four people were killed.”

     Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/05/bob-woodward-watergate-no-maybe-91549.html#ixzz2TZGVug9F

     Except that Obama never went through the talking points and said leave that in, take that out. There was no scrubbing either, but Woodward apparently doesn't know anything about it. 

     Meanwhile this is Nixon's chief counsel during Watergate:

      "The current slate of controversies consuming the White House has some people comparing President Barack Obama to former President Richard Nixon, but a former top Nixon aide thinks that's ridiculous. 

John Dean, who served as White House counsel under the disgraced former president, said that anyone applying the Nixonian label to Obama due is "challenged in their understanding of history." There's no legitimate comparison, Dean argued, between the Internal Revenue Service's improper targeting of conservative groups, the Department of Justice's subpoena of Associated Press phone records or the investigation into the dealy attack in Benghazi, Libya and the scandals that ultimately led to Nixon's undoing."

     “There are no comparisons. They’re not comparable with any of the burgeoning scandals,” Dean told the Boston Globe.

     "Dean was present in the Oval Office when Nixon suggested using the IRS to target his foes.

Obama on Thursday urged people to "read the history" and decide for themselves if the Nixon comparison is approrpiate. Famed journalist Bob Woodward on Friday said that it's premature to compare the IRS scandal to Watergate, but he invoked Nixon's name when discussing Benghazi. "

     http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/nixons-counsel-says-obama-is-no-nixon

     It's not the facts Woodward cares about, however, but his own (ir)relevance. Liberals are going to need stiff spines in the coming weeks. However, long it takes to kill this Cyclops of scandal. James Carville thinks it will be over in a month. Let's hope so. However, until it is, it's our job as liberals to do everything we can to squeeze the life out of this burgeoning octopus. 

    Octopus is the right word: the minute the emails debunked the "scrubbed" narrative-and even made it clear that Susan Rice said nothing improper-you had GOPers moving the goal posts demanding that even more unclassified emails and documents are released. Where does it end? Of course, the trick is it doesn't. Not until there's a "smoking gun." 

    So is the logic of scandals. The parts keep multiplying. Yet facts are all we have. All you can deal in. You have to make the point that Benghazi t been debunked again and again and that the IRS scandal is not about Obama-he had nothing to do with it. And that actually some liberal groups were also scrutinized and that none of these Tea Party groups actually lost their tax exempt status. 

   Now we're hearing that the IRS scandal is the "tip of the iceberg."

   http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/top-republican-these-revelations-are-just-tip-of?ref=fpb

   We hear a GOPer on Fox compare the IRS scandal to Nazi Germany.

   "Conservative activist Tom Zawistowski, the former president of the Ohio Liberty Coalition, compared the Obama administration's ongoing IRS scandal to Nazi Germany during an appearance Thursday afternoon on Fox News."

    "Zawistowski appeared on Neil Cavuto's show to say that he believed his group was among those targeted by the IRS. He said it took two-and-a-half years for his organization's tax-exempt status to be approved."

     "After describing the delay as "onerous intrusive and politically motivated", Zawistowski, called the responses he received from the IRS as "frightening".  

      "This is unbelievable.  This is Nazi Germany," he said.

     http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/fox-guest-compares-obama-irs-uproar-to-nazi?ref=fpb

    It certainly is unbelievable. Talk about needing to read your history. So this is what we're up against. Stiff spine. Facts are all we have.