Whether it be Benghazi, snooping on reporters, or the IRS and NSA
scandals, the White House has dismissed them as “phony scandals”. According
to a new Fox poll, Americans do not.
Remarkably, even most Democrats know better than to believe the president and his toadies when they characterize the many scandals plaguing the nation as “phony” “fake” or “pretend”. They may look the other way or try to rationalize it by saying all administrations lie – but the majority sure ain’t buying it.
A Fox News national poll released Thursday finds that 78 percent of voters think the questions over the administration’s handling of the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi should be taken seriously. Just 17 percent call it a phony scandal.
The attack, on the anniversary of September 11, killed four Americans — including the U.S. ambassador.
Meanwhile, 69 percent of voters say the National Security Agency’s electronic surveillance of everyday Americans is serious, while 26 percent call that a fake scandal.
By a margin of 59-31 percent, voters are also more likely to view the seizure of reporters’ phone records by the Justice Department as serious rather than phony.
And while the White House sees a Congressional investigation of the IRS targeting of conservative groups as a “distraction,” 59 percent of voters take it seriously. Some 33 percent agree with the administration that it’s fake.
In each of the four situations, voters across the partisan spectrum — Republicans, independents and Democrats — are more likely to say the situation should be taken seriously.
I’m not sure Washington Republicans fully grasp how badly these scandals and the Regime’s reactions to them have eroded the trust of the American people in this president. Yesterday, as was reported at Breitbart TV, Shep Smith (no conservative he) quipped that Honey Boo Boo is more honest than Obama.
Not a day goes by anymore that I don’t hear someone expressing their abject distrust in this administration.
Bill Gertz reported over at the Washington Free Beacon that the timing of the regime’s announced closure of the U.S. embassies in the Middle East was raising concerns among some U.S. officials that the Obama administration was politicizing intelligence to distract attention from the scandals.
“Why is this coming out now?” asked one official with access to terrorist threat data. “Is the administration trying to suck up news coverage with the embassy threats to distract attention from what the CIA was doing in Benghazi?”
We are living at a time when we can’t trust our government to tell us the truth about anything – even national security and terror alerts.
Former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra said he is concerned that the administration may be politicizing intelligence because “they have politicized everything.”
A former White House intelligence official noted, “They have debased the coinage of the realm: trust.”
He said
the administration’s response to the Benghazi attack of Sept. 11 was a case in point.
Exactly.
Republicans need to be on the offensive, fighting the Regime’s agenda on every front – not working with Democrats to help prop Obama up. This should be a profoundly weakened presidency.