Saturday, June 14, 2014

Bowe Bergdahl: Scapegoat For Bilious, Frustrated Right-wingers

It's not every day (or possibly ever) that I link to the American Conservative.  But this tracks with my thesis of GOP desperately scratching for anything to feed their ravenous, slavering base.  I'll quibble about the percentages - I don't believe we're close to an even split.  The bitterly angry reactionary contingent is maybe 30% of the population. 

www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/bowe-bergdahl-takes-obamas-heat

"The country is divided roughly down the middle, and worse, the political overlap between the two parties is almost non-existent," said Eugene Fidell, who teaches military law at Yale University. And the Republicans, he said, "determined early on that their best strategy was to neuter this president." This, he added, will join "endless doomed efforts" to do that, like the campaign against "Obamacare" and Benghazi (referring to the 9/11/12attack on the U.S consulate in the Libyan city of Benghazi, the truth of which a host of Republicans say has been covered up by the White House).

"In all honesty, it looks like to me, here is an element of the Republican Party that was hoping that Benghazi was going to be the club to bludgeon the president with and when that didn't work out then this comes along," said one Army officer who did not want to give his name. Another, a Navy JAG officer, told TAC he believed the Republican was actually elevating the five newly released Taliban, making them more important—and potentially more dangerous—than they ever were.

It may just be politics, critics point out to TAC, but the results are poisonous. "I make no particular brief on behalf of Bergdahl," said author Mike Lofgren, who spent 30 years working as a staffer on Capitol Hill, "but maybe they should wait until the facts come out. The fact that the Bergdahl family is subject to death threats shows that the Republicans are basically exploiting a current of psychotic vindictiveness."


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