Notes On A (GOP) Scandal
On September 14, Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes sent an e-mail to President Obama that has recently caused the hackles of the GOP spin machine to rise substantially. In it, Rhodes said that “there is a ton of wrong information getting out into the public domain from Congress and people who are not particularly informed” and that “we need to have the ability to correct the record, as there are significant…ramifications that would flow from a hardened mis-impression.”
While Rhodes most likely intended to limit his words to the importance of politely presenting the facts (and no, not their carefully re-sculpted, ass-saving impostors) amid congressional investigations into that week’s tragedy at Benghazi, the same could be said about a handful of GOP-driven “issues” making national headlines day after day after day.
It should therefore come as no surprise that it wasn’t Rhodes‘ dogged pursuit of promoting accuracy that inspired the ire of pitchfork-and-torch wielding Benghazi “truthers”; rather, it was the fact that this e-mail struck a fatal blow to yet another factually flimsy theory to which Republicans have held tightly and perpetuated on the Hill and in high definition broadcasts.
