Rep. Darrell Issa
Anonymous Republican sources trotted over to Politico
to assure Beltway denizens that Darrell Issa has drawn rebuke from his party over calling White House spokesman Jay Carney a "paid liar."
GOP leaders are concerned that the sometimes unpredictable chairman could jeopardize the biggest gift handed to them in months — public outrage over the IRS scandal, combined with questions over Benghazi. They think Issa should stop personalizing the scandals by insulting Obama and his aides and focus on the facts. [...]
“He has made this personal,” one senior Republican told POLITICO. “He’s added an unnecessary element to the news cycle.”
“When you make Jay Carney the issue, that’s the problem,” said another senior House GOP leadership aide. “No one cares about Jay Carney. That’s a sideshow; it’s not the real issue.”
They want Issa trying to gin something up about Benghazi and connect the White House to the IRS, in other words, they just don't want him to call people liars. The timing of this article is a little suspect, though, since it comes a day after the
National Journal's Shane Goldmacher reported that Issa had
not been reined in by his party's leadership over the "paid liar" comment.
In fact:
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor singled out Issa for praise at a closed-door GOP conference meeting on Tuesday. Hours later, Cantor gave him plaudits on national television, saying on CNN that Issa and other GOP chairmen investigating the IRS were doing “a fantastic job.” [...]
“Chairman Issa is providing tough, effective, and appropriate oversight in the face of White House obstruction,” said Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner.
Would they prefer Issa didn't make his insults of Jay Carney the issue? Maybe—but it's clear that, on the whole, Issa is doing exactly what Republican leadership wants by making unsourced claim after unsourced claim and flamboyantly drawing attention to his partisan investigations. Apparently some in the party aren't entirely comfortable with having that reported as bluntly as Goldmacher did, which is why we now get the Politico article and its heavy reliance on unnamed sources. Because the Villagers accept shoddy politicized investigations, but party leadership condoning such blatant incivility? Heavens, that's beyond the pale.