In response to Issa Fumes, ‘How Dare You!’ At Impertinent Reporter (Video):
With all due respect to Rep. Issa, I’m not really a big fan of the “how dare you!” style, and I’m rather fond of impertinence. In fact, I pride myself on my own.
I spoke with Issa once, and he didn’t seem like the haughty type to me. He’s probably very frustrated, not only with the current ObamaCare and debt-ceiling battles, but with the media helping Obama and his crew skate away from one outrage after another. Congressional oversight can always, in theory, run up against a solid wall of Administration intransigence; the answer to any investigation could be, “What are you gonna do about it, impeach me?” But until Obama, and perhaps Bill Clinton, there was always the sense that the political price for stonewalling could become too high.
It almost certainly still is for Republicans – anyone who thinks a Republican Administration could survive something like Fast and Furious or Benghazi is off their rocker – but Obama’s perfected the art of bluffing his way through a few news cycles and outlasting scandals. After all he’s been through, Issa might be understandably short-tempered with the press once again taking Obama’s side and pronouncing Republican initiatives D.O.A., something they would never do to a Democrat. Imagine some big push by the Democrat Party running afoul of reporters who just blithely assume it’s pointless, and ask what else they’ve got. Never gonna happen.
The only remaining question is whether the media will go 100 percent into the tank for Democrats and portray the possible government shutdown as inherently Republican in nature, even when the GOP is putting bills to fund the government on the table, and Democrats are killing them. There’s no question that most of the press will spin it that way, or sit quietly while Democrats do it, but you never know if a reporter here or there might have an attack of conscience, especially if the Republicans hold together and Democrats keep screaming vile insults at them. Somebody with a few corpuscles of actual journalism coursing through his or her veins might remember the great post-Tucson freak-out about civility and Climates of Hate, and wonder why the Democrats can’t present their side of the debt-ceiling debate without calling their opponents hostage-takers and terrorists.
In the wee hours of Saturday night, the House passed measures to delay ObamaCare for a year, and kill the hated medical device tax. Let’s see if the press is honest enough to talk about ideologically rigid Democrats daring to shut down the federal government to block those measures, which the public not only approves of, but demands. As Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX) pointed out on Twitter, every vote against ObamaCare has received Democrat support… which means every vote against ObamaCare has been more bipartisan than the Affordable Care Act was. The media usually sings hosannas to bipartisanship.
Update: Holy cow… actual text of CBS News Tweet: “BREAKING: House votes to avert government shutdown and delay Obamacare a year.” Maybe I wasn’t just whistling Dixie by hoping for honest reporting.