There’s an old saying in libertarian circles: the GOP is the
stupid party. The release of the House Committee report on Benghazi this week
is the latest evidence in favor of this thesis. Since terrorists attacked a
diplomatic compound and a CIA annex on September 11, 2012, Republicans have
used the incident to engage in one their favorite sports, bashing Hillary.
There’s a reason why the GOP
has survived this long as a major party in spite of its lack of tangible
accomplishments for decades. The party ostensibly is supposed to serve as a
counterweight to the Democrats, the party of progressivism with its ideology of
endless government expansion into all areas of life. However, the GOP has
failed to do so and even grows the government whenever it can, for example,
during the last Bush Administration. Having failed to roll back major
progressive programs installed by the Democrats in the last 100 years, and
implicitly and in practice sharing the Democrats’ preference for big government,
how do the Republicans market this pointless me-tooism to the rank and file?
As I explained in my book on progressivism:“Highly paid and
talented GOP consultants have brilliantly risen to the challenge. There must be
something that keeps the troops anteing up their votes and legwork and
contributions to the mendacious Republican machine that talks smaller
government but never delivers. There is. Here is how the scam works. The GOP
whips up a personal hatred of prominent Democrats as a red herring to distract
their own rank and file away from their lengthy record of failure. . . .
Hillary was right. There is a vast, right-wing conspiracy to whip up hatred of
Democratic icons like Bill and Hillary and Barack and Michelle primarily for
their personal peccadilloes. So long as you hate Obama personally, you won’t be
focusing on the GOP’s pathetic record of never shrinking government. Who cares
if the GOP-controlled House continues to vote to fund the progressive big
government? What’s really important is that rascal Obama golfs too much and
Michelle takes too many vacations. The nerve!”
And so Benghazi has been used to bash Hillary primarily for her
negligent supervision over security for the diplomatic compound and her alleged
lies about the attack being a spontaneous reaction to an anti-Muslim video.
What the GOP must avoid at all costs apparently, is any deeper or more
substantive critique of Hillary and her progressive/big government approach to
foreign policy. Why? Because the GOP favors the very same approach. As the
stupid party, the usual role of the GOP is to take over some war started by the
Democrats and, attack the Democrats for not being forceful (progressive)
enough. See, for example, the Vietnam War. Whether in domestic policy or
foreign policy, the stupid party is always trying to make failed progressive
Democratic programs and wars work better.
Thus, with Libya, the GOP attacks the Democrats for not putting
enough resources into the war and not having made provisions for staying around
longer after Gaddafi was deposed. They say the same about Iraq and are still
heard to complain that the problem with Vietnam was that, after dropping more
bombs than were dropped in World War II, spending hundreds of billions of
dollars and after a million people died, the insufficient force was used. The
stupid party indeed.
What do libertarians call the Democrats? The evil party. Are Barack
Obama and Hillary Clinton responsible for the deaths of four Americans in
Benghazi? Of course, they are. These two plotted, planned and executed an
illegal invasion of a country, causing murder, mayhem, and chaos of the kind
that occurred on September 11, 2012. The stupid party can’t even see a war
crime when it is right in front of their faces.
