Opinion | Republicans gear up for a torrent of Benghazi-style investigations

By Paul Waldman

Columnist

Today at 12:41 p.m. EST

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) speaks at a news conference on Capitol Hill in July. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

This has been a frustrating year on Capitol Hill. Despite the passage of some important legislation — the covid-19 rescue package in March, the infrastructure bill in November — the sweeping ambition of Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign agenda is now a fading echo, thanks to Sen. Joe Manchin III’s (D-W.Va.) contempt for ordinary people and unceasing desire to lay the Democratic Party low.

So if you’re dissatisfied with a Congress that delivers little but disappointment, Republicans are ready to offer something very different. When they take back the House next November — an outcome that is now all but certain — they will give the American public a frenzy of activity and action.

Any resemblance to a policy agenda, however, will be purely coincidental. Instead, they promise a string of investigations meant to whip the GOP base into a lather, provide endless source material for Fox News rants and create a general atmosphere of chaos and corruption. None of it will have even the remotest connection to anything that affects the life of actual Americans, but who cares?

Axios obtained plans House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is preparing for GOP control of the chamber. If you thought the eight separate investigations of Benghazi were the apotheosis of governing in the modern age, you’re in luck.

McCarthy is planning “aggressive probes of the Biden administration." Though one or two have some surface relationship to a genuine policy issue — the withdrawal from Afghanistan is one — most look like they were chosen by Fox News programmers to produce maximum fake outrage.

There’s the leak of Internal Revenue Service data showing how billionaires avoid paying taxes — which has the GOP up in arms not because of what it revealed, but because the information was leaked. When will billionaires finally catch a break? There’s the Justice Department memo announcing interagency discussions to deal with threats and intimidation directed at local school officials — which Republicans claimed was a Stalinist crackdown on innocent parents.

The most vivid of the planned “investigations” is this: In June, Fox News host Tucker Carlson, in between trying to convince his viewers not to get vaccinated and spreading “great replacement” conspiracy theories, made the bizarre claim that the National Security Agency was “monitoring our electronic communications and is planning to leak them in an attempt to take this show off the air.” Republicans are planning a full-blown congressional probe of Carlson’s allegations.

Oversight is one of the most critical functions of Congress; its ability to investigate executive branch mistakes and misconduct can bring to light vital information the public needs to know, often creating a foundation for necessary reforms. Since the opposition party can’t pass its own legislation unless it wants to seek bipartisanship (which of course Republicans do not), oversight is one of the few productive things it can do until it wins the presidency.

But effective oversight depends on responsible overseers. And today’s congressional Republicans are as far from responsible as they could be. One couldn’t refer to the collection of cynics and buffoons in the GOP caucus as “legislators” without bursting out laughing; they’re Fox News personalities who happen to have offices on Capitol Hill.

None of the investigations they mount will have anything to do with the policy agenda they’ll pursue whenever they next take complete control of government. They won’t hold hearings on the boundless wisdom of tax cuts for the rich, or the importance of pouring more carbon into the atmosphere. If it gets the base angry, they’ll investigate it; if not, they won’t bother.

What is most depressing is that it doesn’t seem like a bad political strategy, and it’s one they employ whenever they get the chance. In the 1990s, congressional Republicans took 140 hours of sworn testimony on the pressing issue of whether Bill Clinton misused the White House Christmas card list. I wish that were a joke, but it isn’t.

When Barack Obama was president, they tried mightily to gin up one scandal after another, each one presented as though it were Worse Than Watergate and would finally take Obama down. Solyndra! Fast and Furious! And of course, Benghazi — over and over and over.

It didn’t hurt them; despite their antics, they took complete control of Congress in 2014, then won the White House in 2016. Today they probably see that history as proof the strategy works and they should just rerun the same play, holding hearings on whatever fake scandal their friends at Fox News tell them is getting viewers animated, so Republican members can shout at Biden officials for the camera.

There is some tiny chance that Democrats can avert a Republican takeover — if they could present their own voters with a compelling reason to turn out and vote. But at the moment, that doesn’t seem to be in the cards. Which means we’re headed for a period of phony investigations, fake outrage and real misery.