When he appears on CBS’s Face The Nation tomorrow, Trey Gowdy has a lot of explaining to do. In recent weeks, many in the media have gone public with long-running suspicions that the Benghazi Committee is a shameful partisan exercise, and the reviews aren’t pretty. Ever since Kevin McCarthy spilled the beans and admitted that the committee was designed to bring down Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers, analysts have called it a “scandal,” a “charade,” a “committee run amok,” driven by a “political obsession,” a “farcical exercise,” and a “partisan sham.”
No matter how many different ways you put it, the truth is clear: Trey Gowdy’s Benghazi Committee is an abuse of power, a misuse of taxpayer funds, and a disgraceful blot on American democracy. On Face The Nation, across the media, and in Congress, he should continue be held accountable for his exploitation of the public trust.
Independent Spectators Have Criticized the Partisan Benghazi Committee
Vox’s Jon Allen: “The Benghazi committee was always designed to go after Clinton, but Republicans only started owning up to it recently.” “The Benghazi committee was always designed to go after Clinton, but Republicans only started owning up to it recently. Back in June, when the Benghazi committee deposed Clinton confidant and correspondent Sid Blumenthal, I wrote that the panel finally had stripped away any pretense that it was actually interested in investigating the terrorist attacks and preventing future assaults on American diplomatic facilities. Blumenthal, who sent Clinton emails about the situation in Libya, had never even been to the country. It was a particularly telling moment, but the truth is that the committee, which has focused a lot of its time on obtaining documents and testimony that later appear in print, was always a way for House Republicans to show their constituents that they were going to try to turn the tragedy into political gain at Clinton’s expense.” [Vox, 10/15/15]
MSNBC’s Steve Benen: “The Benghazi Committee isn’t investigating a scandal. The Benghazi Committee is the scandal.” “The Benghazi Committee isn’t investigating a scandal. The Benghazi Committee is the scandal. There’s been some debate in recent weeks about whether congressional Democrats should continue to participate in such an obvious farce. It’s a worthwhile question that deserves an answer. But it’s arguably just the start of a larger conversation. Given the circumstances, it’s not unreasonable to think there should be an independent investigation into the Republican’s Benghazi Committee itself in order to uncover why it was formed, why its redundant work was deemed necessary, how it spent millions of taxpayer dollars, why the probe has been dragged out for so long, and whether the panel violated ethics laws by using official resources for partisan political purposes.” [MSNBC, 10/15/15]
Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum: “It’s getting harder and harder to play along with the charade.” “Republicans have screwed the pooch on Benghazi. The press can only play along with their faux investigation as long as they maintain plausible deniability about its partisan goals. But now we have (a) Kevin McCarthy spilling the beans, (b) news reports that John Boehner wanted to use the committee to attack Hillary, (c) Richard Hanna agreeing that it was mostly a partisan witch hunt, and (d) no less than the New York Times reporting that the committee has all but given up on Benghazi in favor of holding hearings on Hillary’s email server. We knew all along there was a man behind the curtain, but now he’s actually been exposed. It’s getting harder and harder to play along with the charade.” [Mother Jones, 10/15/15]
The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent: “Republicans are destroying the House Benghazi probe’s credibility.” [Headline: “Morning Plum: Republicans are destroying the House Benghazi probe’s credibility. But will it matter?”] [The Washington Post, 10/15/15]
Los Angeles Times: Kevin McCarthy’s “gaffe laid bare the political obsession driving the committee’s work.” “House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy did Clinton a big favor by going on Fox News and suggesting the Benghazi committee’s biggest accomplishment has been to bring down Hillary’s poll numbers. That gaffe laid bare the political obsession driving the committee’s work. On Sunday, a former committee staffer said he was fired for failing to focus his research on Hillary. Then, on Wednesday another GOP congressman, New York Rep. Richard Hanna, added further confirmation of the political chicanery when — on a radio station in his district — he said, ‘This may not be politically correct, but I think that there was a big part of this investigation that was designed to go after people and an individual, Hillary Clinton.”’ [Los Angeles Times, 10/15/15]
The Atlantic’s James Fallows: “The reality is that the Republican staff and majority of the committee have made it function as an oppo-research arm of the Republican National Committee.” “It has taken mainstream journalism a very long time to catch up with the reality of the ‘Benghazi Committee,’ run by Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina. (He is from our beloved Greenville, in fact.) The reality is that the Republican staff and majority of the committee have made it function as an oppo-research arm of the Republican National Committee, far more interested in whatever it might dig up about or against Hillary Clinton than any remaining mysteries on the four Americans killed in Benghazi.” [The Atlantic, 10/13/15]
The Atlantic: Republicans insistence that the Benghazi Committee is not political face “a difficult argument given its focus as drifted away from the attacks themselves and toward Clinton’s email.” “Many Republicans rushed to insist the Benghazi committee had the purest of motives—a difficult argument given its focus has drifted away from the attacks themselves and toward Clinton’s email fracas, and because the inquiry has now dragged on for 17 months.” [The Atlantic, 10/13/15]
MSNBC’s Steve Benen: “Why should American taxpayers continue to fund such a farcical exercise?” “Taken together, we now have House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) characterizing the committee’s work as an election scheme to undermine Hillary Clinton; we have a former Republican staffer for the committee complaining that the committee’s sole interest was in tearing down Hillary Clinton; and now we have senior Republican officials acknowledging that GOP leaders directed the Benghazi committee to focus on email server management – instead of, you know, Benghazi – in order to “cause political problems” for Hillary Clinton. At this point, even the most rabid Republican partisans are going to have a hard time justifying the committee’s continued existence. Why should American taxpayers continue to fund such a farcical exercise? (Remember, ‘because there’s an election coming up’ is not an acceptable answer.)” [MSNBC, 10/13/15]
Slate’s Jamelle Bouie: “The House Benghazi investigation is now thoroughly discredited as a partisan sham.” [Subtitle:] “The House Benghazi investigation is now thoroughly discredited as a partisan sham.” [Slate, 10/12/15]
The Daily Beast: “The GOP-created House Select Committee on Benghazi is nothing more than a partisan effort to hurt Hillary Clinton and help the Republicans in the 2016 presidential race.” “What many thought was true has been confirmed this week: The GOP-created House Select Committee on Benghazi is nothing more than a partisan effort to hurt Hillary Clinton and help the Republicans in the 2016 presidential race. At this point the House leadership should do the right thing and offer a public apology to the families of the four Americans killed in that terrorist attack for using their loved ones as props to bolster their political ambitions. Plus, the GOP House leadership should reimburse U.S. taxpayers for the nearly $5 million spent on this “investigation,” which in essence is nothing more than a negative campaign commercial against Hillary Clinton.” [The Daily Beast, 10/12/15]
New York Times’ Paul Krugman: “We all knew that” the House Benghazi hearings were all about inflicting political damage on Hillary Clinton. “Still, he finished off his chances by admitting — boasting, actually — that the endless House hearings on Benghazi had nothing to do with national security, that they were all about inflicting political damage on Hillary Clinton. But we all knew that, didn’t we?” [The New York Times, 10/9/15]
New York Times Editorial Board: The Benghazi Committee has “become an insult to the memory of four slain Americans.” “Lawmakers have long abused their investigative authority for political purposes. But the effort to find Mrs. Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time of the Libya attacks, was personally responsible for the deaths has lost any semblance of credibility. It’s become an insult to the memory of four slain Americans.” [New York Times Editorial, 10/7/15]
New York Times’ Foreign Affairs Editor, Carol Giacomo: McCarthy admitted to the “duplicity and political chicanery behind the creation of the Select Committee on Benghazi. “It has long appeared that the Republican obsession with investigating the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya was not a genuine attempt to get the facts behind a tragic incident in which four Americans, including the United States ambassador, lost their lives but a partisan witch hunt targeting Hillary Rodham Clinton, the frontrunner for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination. Now there is proof of the duplicity and political chicanery behind the creation of the Select Committee on Benghazi. It was ham-handedly exposed by Representative Kevin McCarthy, who, in his quest to become the next speaker of the House, couldn’t resist boasting about what he considers his party’s major political accomplishment.” [New York Times Editor’s Blog, 10/2/15]
New York Times’ Foreign Affairs Editor, Carol Giacomo: “Despite wasting $4.5 million and conducting one of the longest congressional probes in history, the committee has shed no significant new light on the Benghazi attack.” “Despite wasting $4.5 million and conducting one of the longest congressional probes in history, the committee has shed no significant new light on the Benghazi attack. It would be surprising if it did. Several other congressional committees and a panel of outside experts commissioned by the State Department have investigated the attack and the government’s response. They concluded that the tragedy was preventable and condemned ‘systemic failures’ at senior levels of the State Department. But none found evidence that Mrs. Clinton, then secretary of state, was specifically to blame or produced any other bombshell to support some wild Republican conspiracy theories.” [New York Times Editor’s Blog, 10/2/15]
Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne Jr.: “So now we know: One of the principal reasons Republicans spent so much public money investigating the tragic Benghazi episode was to bring down Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers.” “So now we know: One of the principal reasons Republicans spent so much public money investigating the tragic Benghazi episode was to bring down Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers. Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the likely successor to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), told Fox News’s Sean Hannity explicitly on Tuesday night that the Clinton investigation was part of a ‘strategy to fight and win.’ He explained: ‘Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable. But no one would have known any of that had happened, had we not fought.’” [E.J. Dionne Jr. opinion, Washington Post, 9/30/15]
The Hill: McCarthy’s comment “confirmed long-held accusations that the panel had been little more than a political hit job for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.” “The Tuesday evening comments from McCarthy — the No. 2 House Republican and front-runner to be the next Speaker — confirmed long-held accusations that the panel has been little more than a political hit-job for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, they say.” [The Hill, 9/30/15]
Salon’s Simon Maloy: McCarthy “ended up saying out loud and on television the one thing Republicans aren’t supposed to say about the House Select Committee on Benghazi.” “House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy is, at this moment, the Democrats’ best pal. He went on Fox News last night to talk up his campaign to replace outgoing House Speaker John Boehner, and he ended up saying out loud and on television the one thing Republicans aren’t supposed to say about the House Select Committee on Benghazi: it’s all about taking down Hillary Clinton.” [Salon, 9/30/15]
Salon’s Simon Maloy: “Anyone who’s paid even cursory attention to the GOP’s treatment of the Benghazi attacks will likely have already concluded that the party’s interest in the matter is linked to Hillary Clinton’s presidential ambitions.” “This is an archetypal example of the Kinsley Gaffe: a politician accidentally uttering a truthful statement. Anyone who’s paid even cursory attention to the GOP’s treatment of the Benghazi attacks will likely have already concluded that the party’s interest in the matter is linked to Hillary Clinton’s presidential ambitions. But it’s still bracing to see one of the most powerful Republicans in Washington come right out and brag about how he and his colleagues set up a taxpayer-funded investigation to damage the political prospects of the opposition party’s leading presidential candidate. It’s downright scandalous, and precisely the sort of political corruption that Republicans argue is at the heart of the Obama administration’s response to Benghazi.” [Salon, 9/30/15]
Vox’s Andrew Prokop: “The Select Committee on Benghazi’s investigation has long appeared partisan” and “unusually focused on Hillary Clinton.” “The Select Committee on Benghazi’s investigation has long appeared partisan. Several investigations into the Benghazi events have already wrapped up without findings of serious wrongdoing. Yet the House Select Committee on Benghazi has kept at it — and has long appeared unusually focused on Hillary Clinton, and even on a member of her circle who wasn’t even in the administration.” [Vox, 9/30/15]
MSNBC’s Alex Seitz-Wald: The GOP only “sought to portray the investigation as even-handed and non-partisan.” “Kevin McCarthy, a top Republican lawmaker on track to become the next speaker of the House, credited the Select Committee on Benghazi for damaging Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers Tuesday night — a surprising admission from a party that has sought to portray the investigation as even-handed and non-partisan.” [MSNBC, 9/30/15]
Washington Post’s Dave Weigel: Trey Gowdy would never have been considered for majority leader “without the goodwill engendered by the Benghazi investigation.” “The aftermath of Boehner’s decision to retire has done damage to that argument. Yesterday, Capitol Hill rumbled with talk that Gowdy would run to replace McCarthy as majority leader, a position the third-term congressman would not have been in without the goodwill engendered by the Benghazi investigation. After hours of confusion — even after Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) insisted that there’d be a way for Gowdy to lead both the investigation and the House GOP — the South Carolinian insisted at a closed-door meeting that he wasn’t in the leadership hunt, and had to focus on Benghazi.” [Washington Post, 9/30/15]
MSNBC’s Steve Benen: McCarthy’s candor “served as a timely reminder that the Benghazi investigation that no longer focuses on Benghazi is now little more than a taxpayer-financed farce.” “There were no real reason to create this committee, and the panel itself no longer serves any legitimate purpose. McCarthy’s unexpected candor was welcome – it was, to be sure, surprising to see him make such a concession on national television – but it served as a timely reminder that the Benghazi investigation that no longer focuses on Benghazi is now little more than a taxpayer-financed farce.” [MSNBC, 9/30/15]
MSNBC’s Steve Benen: Republicans see the Benghazi Committee as a legitimate accomplishment “because Hillary Clinton’s ‘numbers are dropping.’” “Second, the ostensible point of the Select Committee on Benghazi was to examine a terrorist attack that left four Americans dead in Libya, not to create an election tool that can affect a presidential candidate’s poll numbers. Note, McCarthy sees the committee as a legitimate accomplishment of the Republican Congress, not because it’s uncovered relevant details about an act of terrorism, but because Hillary Clinton’s ‘numbers are dropping.’ This, in his mind, is evidence of the GOP majority using its power effectively – by using a supposedly non-partisan investigatory vehicle to embarrass a Democrat with dubious allegations.” [MSNBC, 9/30/15]
Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum: “I think everyone knows perfectly well that there’s nothing there and never has been.” “Benghazi is the modern version of Whitewater. I think everyone knows perfectly well that there’s nothing there and never has been, but it gives Republicans an institutional base to issue subpoenas and basically poke into anything that might hurt Hillary. Just as Whitewater led to Filegate led to the blue dress, Benghazi has led to emailgate, and from there, who knows? But obviously Republicans are hoping that if they just keep the investigation going, eventually they’ll get their blue dress.” [Mother Jones, 9/30/15]
Los Angeles Times Headline: “McCarthy makes plain what Democrats have long suspected about the Benghazi committee.” [LA Times, 9/30/15]
Washington Post: McCarthy showed “that the probes are less about genuine accountability than about driving up her negatives.” “The problem comes in the linking of this directly to Clinton’s ‘dropping numbers.’ It suggests that the probes are less about genuine accountability than about driving up her negatives, to use the cliche so beloved by political pros. It is reasonable to surmise that the probes at this point are more about pumping out as much fog as possible to create a general impression of wrongdoing that, hopefully, will sow inchoate public doubts about Clinton. McCarthy’s quote may not prove this to be true, but it provides more support for that theory of the case.” [Washington Post, 9/30/15]
Washington Post’s Richard Cohen: “A terrorist attack in Libya is no laughing matter. Neither is a congressional committee run amok.” “My hobby is not entirely whimsical. When a congressional committee has been in existence for more than a year, when it has subpoenaed witnesses and put them under oath, when it has compelled them to account for their e-mails and, in one case, invoke the Fifth Amendment, then maybe we ought to know what it is up to. A terrorist attack in Libya is no laughing matter. Neither is a congressional committee run amok.” [Richard Cohen opinion, Washington Post, 9/28/15]
Washington Post’s Richard Cohen: “Benghazi has become a Republican fixation” and the scandal has become “the use of a congressional committee for political purposes.” “Benghazi has become a Republican fixation. It is mentioned with utmost solemnity, virtual code for treason or something close to it. It is no longer an event, a debacle and a tragedy, but a totem: Something went wrong. Someone’s at fault. Why not Clinton? In the latest Republican debate, Carly Fiorina, she of the hallucinatory abortion procedure, accused Clinton of having a ‘track record of lying about Benghazi.’ Yeah, sure. But give us an example, please. The true Benghazi scandal is not what happened on the Libyan coast, but the use of a congressional committee for political purposes — to damage the likely Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, by rummaging through her e-mails.” [Richard Cohen opinion, Washington Post, 9/28/15]
Former Federal Prosecutor Michel Zeldin: “No lessons relevant to what should be the work of the House Benghazi Committee will be learned by studying the structure by which Secretary Clinton transmitted and received e-mails.” “For certain, no lessons relevant to what should be the work of the House Benghazi Committee will be learned by studying the structure by which Secretary Clinton transmitted and received e-mails. It is worth remembering that in the hundreds of years before electronic communication became the norm, federal records were reviewed by the office holder, who sorted his/her papers before handing them over to archivists – and the Union survived.” [Michael Zeldin opinion, The Hill, 9/9/15]
Blue Nation Review’s Jimmy Williams: The Benghazi Committee is participating in “a purely unadulterated political lynching focused on one person and one person only: Hillary Clinton.” “Let me be clear: I absolutely support the Congress’ role of oversight. I worked in the Senate on two different committees: the Senate Banking Committee and the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs. Both committees play essential oversight roles and much of the work I did there was focused on keeping a check on the banking industry as well as the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. But what Gowdy and his cohorts are doing with their ‘select’ committee isn’t oversight. It’s a purely unadulterated political lynching focused on one person and one person only: Hillary Clinton.” [Blue Nation Review, 8/21/15]
AP: The Select Committee on Benghazi “has devolved from an investigation into the deaths of four Americans in Libya into a political fight over Hillary Rodham Clinton’s emails and private computer server.” “A special House committee on the 2012 Benghazi attacks has devolved from an investigation into the deaths of four Americans in Libya into a political fight over Hillary Rodham Clinton’s emails and private computer server — a battle that is likely to stretch into the 2016 presidential election year.” [AP, 7/14/15]
The Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky: The Benghazi Committee’s “real job is to get Clinton” and the ‘“investigation’ now constitutes openly and defiantly urinating on the grave of Amb. Stevens.” “But the fact is he [Sidney Blumenthal] went before that committee for one reason and one reason only: because its real job is not to investigate those four deaths, which in any case have been investigated eight times by seven congressional committees and once by a State Department review board, none of which found any wrongdoing on Hillary Clinton’s part. No, this committee’s real job is to get Clinton. Let’s mention high up what is the main point here. This ‘investigation’ now constitutes openly and defiantly urinating on the grave of Amb. Stevens. Many diplomats and friends of Stevens’s are aghast at this.”[The Daily Beast, 6/17/15]
Former Acting U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Joseph Wilson: The House Select Committee on Benghazi is “the latest inquiry into the faux scandal the Republicans keep trying to exploit for partisan advantage.” “Since when has it become appropriate to profit from the violent deaths of four Americans in the service of our nation to raise money for political coffers? Since when has it become appropriate to use emails obtained illegally by a central European criminal hacker, operating from a Russian server and the subject of a federal indictment in a cyber attack against former U.S. officials, to impugn the integrity of a U.S. Secretary of State and her sources? Apparently when you are a Republican on the House Select Committee on Benghazi — the latest inquiry into the faux scandal the Republicans keep trying to exploit for partisan advantage.” [Joseph Wilson opinion, Huffington Post, 6/16/15]
MSNBC: The GOP-led Select Committee “is drifting, taking a keen interest in all kinds of other issues far from its mandate.” “Nearly three years after the deadly terrorism, however, the GOP-led panel is drifting, taking a keen interest in all kinds of other issues far from its mandate. The Associated Press reported last week that the GOP-led panel ‘has devolved from an investigation into the deaths of four Americans in Libya into a political fight over Hillary Rodham Clinton’s emails and private computer server – a battle that is likely to stretch into the 2016 presidential election year.’” [MSNBC, 7/23/15]
Former Deputy CIA Director Michael Morell criticized Republicans for politicizing the Benghazi tragedy. “The CIA’s former deputy director is charging that Republicans have politicized the deadly 2012 assault on the U.S diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya. Michael Morell, in a forthcoming book, rejects the claim that U.S. military and CIA officers ‘were ordered to stand down and not come to the rescue of their comrades,’ according to The New York Times. Morell, who retired in 2013, also states that there is ‘no evidence’ to back the allegation that ‘there was a conspiracy between the CIA and the White House to spin the Benghazi story in a way that would protect the political interests’ of President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.” [The Hill, 5/4/15]
Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky: “Why is the committee that was impaneled to investigate the deaths of four Americans in a consular attack of Benghazi subpoenaing an IT guy in the first place?” “TOMASKY: She’s not blameless here by any means. As I wrote yesterday, she made an error in setting up this system in the first place. And this is going to be a bad headline, no doubt about that. But here’s a question that I bet a lot of people watching this segment haven’t even pondered. Why is the committee that was impaneled to investigate the deaths of four Americans in a consular attack of Benghazi subpoenaing an IT guy in the first place? You could drum up — Gowdy, if he were here, he could drum up some phony answers to that question, Tamron. But the answer to the question is, because this committee is not investigating those death in Benghazi anymore. It’s investigating Hillary Clinton politically and trying to find something on her to keep her out of the white house. That’s obviously what this is about.” [MSNBC’s NewsNation with Tamron Hall, 9/3/15]
MSNBC Headline: “The ‘political charade’ on Benghazi comes into focus.” [MSNBC, 4/23/15]
Bloomberg: The GOP’s Benghazi Committee seized “on the revelations regarding Clinton’s private e-mail domain to expand their committee’s mandate, delay Clinton’s testimony and extend their investigation indefinitely.” “The panel’s Republican House members are seizing on the revelations regarding Clinton’s private e-mail domain to expand their committee’s mandate, delay Clinton’s testimony and extend their investigation indefinitely. The committee chairman, Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, the chairman of the Benghazi committee, sent subpoenas to Clinton on Wednesday asking for access to her full e-mail records, his office said.” [Bloomberg, 3/5/15]
Some of them have called for the Farce to End
New York Times Editorial Board: “Shut Down the Benghazi Committee.” [New York Times Editorial, 10/7/15]
New York Times Editorial Board: “If the Republicans insist on keeping the process alive, the Democrats should stop participating in this charade.” “Mrs. Clinton is scheduled to testify before the committee on Oct. 22. The hearing will give Republicans another chance to attack the credibility and trustworthiness of the leading Democratic presidential candidate. It will do nothing to make American embassies abroad safer or help the relatives of the four killed in Libya. The hearing should be the last salvo for a committee that has accomplished nothing. If the Republicans insist on keeping the process alive, the Democrats should stop participating in this charade.” [New York Times Editorial, 10/7/15]
New York Times’ Foreign Affairs Editor, Carol Giacomo: “The committee should be disbanded and if the Republican leadership refuses to do that, then the panel’s Democratic members should resign.” “The committee should be disbanded and if the Republican leadership refuses to do that, then the panel’s Democratic members should resign. Manipulating government funds for political purposes in this way may well violate congressional ethics rules, as Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi has suggested. There is little reason to expect that Republicans, united in defeating Mrs. Clinton at all costs, care enough to do anything about it.” [New York Times Editor’s Blog, 10/2/15]
Vox Headline: “Republicans should shut down the Benghazi committee for their own good.” [Vox, 10/1/15]
Vox’s Jonathan Allen predicted the Committee would shut down imminently. “Shutting down the panel is a no-brainer, and I’d be surprised if the Benghazi committee, now tarnished by McCarthy’s ill-advised and ill-timed remarks, is still in place a month from now. Perhaps the Clinton appearance before the panel will be postponed indefinitely, or perhaps it will be the committee’s last act. Either way, it doesn’t make sense for the GOP to keep it operating. It would be an act of compassion for House Speaker John Boehner to disband it before McCarthy becomes speaker and is faced with the unenviable choice of either enraging conservatives by shutting it down in response to his epic own goal or letting it live as a symbol of House Republicans’ willingness to use the levers of power for partisan political gain.” [Vox, 10/1/15]