Loser Rep. Trey Gowdy looks on at our next president and—why not?—vice-president.
Random thoughts on yesterday's riveting show:
More thoughts below.
- The GOP just did more to unify the party base around Clinton and intensify her support than she could've ever managed to do on her own. Watch the polling confirm this in the coming weeks, improving on her post-debate positive movement.
- Jim Webb is out, Lincoln Chaffee is out, and Joe Biden never got in. So we're left with Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, and even Bernie probably wants to vote for Hillary after yesterday (even if just for a moment).
- In her place, I would've jumped over my witness table and punched one of those assholes within 20 minutes. Her restraint was unreal. Unflappable. Sober. It was a marathon designed to break her, but it was the Republicans on the committee who broke first, spittle flying in the final hours.
- The GOP's stupidity in all of this is epic. They should've cancelled the hearings after last week's debates, as it was clear she was on her "A" game. But if you don't cancel, at least prepare with something more than, "Your friends visit you at home, but your coworkers do not!"
- Do those asshole Republicans really not realize that we have multiple modes of communication that aren't email? Rep. Westmoreland sure as heck didn't know the difference between an email address and a server. Someone get Ted Stevens to explain the internet to him.
- Would it have been too much to ask the Republicans to sync up their conspiracy theories so they had at least some measure of internal logic? The shit was all over the place! For the team that usually exhibits perfect message discipline, this was outright bizarre.
Was it that she didn't care? Or that she wanted to run a victory lap and declare "mission accomplished" (which is the worst thing ever as long as your name isn't George Bush), or that Sidney Blumenthal runs a secret shadow government, or that she met with al Qaeda in Libya right before the attack (which was a real thing at the hearing), or that she didn't personally invite every ambassador to her house, or that she LIED when blaming the attack on that internet video?
- In short, does anyone know what the GOP's overarching story is supposed to be? I DON'T GET IT! Is it this:
- True story: In the early days of blogging, people speculated that the blogger Atrios was actually Sidney Blumenthal.
- Yesterday was the first general election presidential debate. If I were the GOP, I'd try to make it the last.