The Meaning of the Benghazi tragedy

Fox TV News has gone All Benghazi All Day for the last week. Congressional Republicans are implying that this is worse than Watergate (since no one died in Watergate), and further implying that the President should resign over it.

Of course embassies and consulates and American foreign service personnel have been attacked and murdered under every president. Big world, lots of bad guys, foreign service can be a hazardous occupation, and we can have a company of Army rangers marching behind every foreign service staffer in dangerous areas.

I shouldn't have to prove this. Anyone who's followed the news generally for the last few decades will know this is true.

So with that in mind, here's the meaning of Benghazi:

The Republican Party's leadership has, for the past several decades, discarded one of the cornerstones of any democracy: abiding by the results of an election.

They impeached President Clinton for offenses that were not impeachable offenses. When Obama won in 2008, they vowed to make defeating him in 2012 their first order of business--not doing the People's business, but instead making the Party's business their job--at taxpayer expense of course.

And now they're challenging the results of this election in every way they can. Romney claiming Obama bought the votes (where's the vaunted Republican Grownup principle of not making excuses and taking your lumps?). Senator McCain proving he was never presidential material with his jihad over Benghazi. Accusation by Party leader Karl Rover of Democrats carrying out voter suppression--how's that for irony?

They don't have to like Obama having won. I sure wouldn't have liked it if Romney has won--especially since he has now proven that he has nothing but contempt for nearly half the country, showing exactly the attitude of entitlement that out of touch plutocrats are said to have in the popular stereotype. Well, the stereotype is there for a reason--some plutocrats really do think that way, and Romney's one of them.

The fact that so many Republican poo-bahs were blindsided by Obama winning shows the greatest danger of being a con artist: you can start to believe your own con. To accept that Obama won fair and square, beyond any local issues at the polls being able to change it, would require also accepting that they are out of touch with reality.

I'm not expecting them to adopt a liberal philosophy. But I am expecting them to say things based on evidence, not just wishful thinking--or mind-obliterating animosity. What sane person would want to entrust the Presidency to someone who didn't know the facts on the ground of this country--whether his political philosophy agreed with yours or not?

Bottom line is we have one of the two parties that won't accept election results except when it wins.

That is profoundly unpatriotic.