For the first time in over four years, Republicans, it seems, have the upper hand. Or, more accurately: For the first time in over four years, Republicans see the chance to have the upper hand. The results are interchangeable.
Three ongoing controversies have hurtled the GOP -- particularly its furthest-right faction -- back onto Washington's boxing ring, giving it legs to stand on after being crippled by years' worth of infighting and the accompanying perception that its members were becoming ever-more "rigid" and "extreme."
Long-peddled questions about how the administration handled an attack last Sept. 11 in Benghazi, Libya, were recently joined by news that the Justice Department secretly subpoenaed reporters' phone records. And then there was the conservatives' crown jewel: An inspector general's report that showed members of the Internal Revenue Service targeted tea party groups for excessive review of their tax-exempt status.
Just like that, gone were the calls for compromise that echoed through the party just a few short months ago. Dulled were the glimmers of possibility ignited by President Obama's "charm offensive," wining-and-dining the same GOP senators whose resistance to his revenue plan ended in sequestration March 1, and many visits to the "fiscal cliff's" brink before that.
Public name-calling isn't an art reserved exclusively for election cycles, but it's one that's most effective when backed by a reasonable amount of substance -- or leverage. Now, armed with "scandals" that all implicate various members of the president's team, Republicans have resurrected the level of rhetoric that drove their campaign to unseat him in 2012.
"I think the constellation of these three scandals really takes away from the president's moral authority to lead the nation," said Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a likely 2016 White House contender, on ABC's "This Week." "No one questions his legal authority -- but I really think he's losing the moral authority to lead this nation."
Paul and other prominent Republicans capitalized on their newfound empowerment by taking on Mr. Obama's counterterrorism plan, as detailed by him during an hour-long speech Thursday at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C.
"It's just stunningly, breathtakingly naive," said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., who unsuccessfully ran to replace the president last year. Specifically, he took issue with Mr. Obama's flat-out declaration that the war on terror, "like all wars, must end."
"Right after you have somebody beheaded in London, you have a bomb go off in Boston; you have the Iranians... every day trying to penetrate our system with cyber; you have an Iranian nuclear program underway," Gingrich said Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union." "And the president announces cheerfully, 'the war's going to end because I'm not happy being a war president.'"
Rep. Mike McCaul, R-Texas, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, remarked on CNN: "The rhetoric sort of defies the reality on the threat level we've been briefed on. ...I mean, the narrative is sort of that, you know, al Qaeda is on the run -'they're defeated, let's claim victory, war's over.' And then, let's go back to a pre-9/11 mentality. He actually said that the threat now is what it was before 9/11. I couldn't disagree with him more on that."
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