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Friday, October 30, 2015

Krauthammer: Skip the Investigations, Win the Election

At a certain point, you have to realize you can’t hit a fastball. House Republicans don’t quite get that they are hopeless at oversight hearings. They keep losing — and now the chairman of the House Oversight Committee has just introduced articles of impeachment against IRS Commissioner John Koskinen.

I’m sympathetic to the GOP motive, given how the Obama IRS has consistently obstructed and misled Congress in the tax-exemption scandal. But impeachment is no ordinary move. No agency chief or Cabinet officer has been impeached since 1876. And even proponents admit that there is no chance of Koskinen being removed from office because the Senate will never convict.

Instead, says Chairman Jason Chaffetz, the purpose is public education, “to demonstrate to the American people” that the IRS “will be held accountable” for violating the public trust.

I’m all for demonstrating malfeasance. But the GOP House has given a five-year display of its inability to successfully demonstrate anything. From Benghazi all the way back to Operation Fast and Furious, its hearings' impact on public perception has been either zero or negative.

Take the IRS case, for instance..

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

If they take the evidence that they are would use during the impeachment and senate hearings and use it (in its raw form without the spin) during the election campaigns and simply provide the evidence while stating to the voting public that there is not a majority in power willing to convict...let the voting public convict them at the ballot box!

KBinLA said...

If you take anything with you from this article., be it this, "...the GOP House has given a five-year display of its inability to successfully demonstrate anything."