Captain Ahab and the GOP

Conservative pols are in a feeding frenzy. Due to the latest political scandal (Benghazi and IRS), they feel that they have The Big O  (Obama) on the ropes.. They are in a palpable state of glee -- walking with a renewed sense of vigor and confidence.

 Some have even dared to float the impeachment word.

The body language says it all: We have this brown man right where we want him. As the notorious captain Ahab obsessively pursued Moby Dick, the GOP has -- country be damned -- placed The Big O in their crossbow from the get-go.

You may remember of Ahab:

He was obsessed with the white whale : obsessed to the point he willingly and knowingly leads his ship and entire crew towards death, month after month pursuing his quarry.
\Refusing to help other mariners in need, refusing to pursue other whales and profits, obsessed unto the point of death.

The Big O has tormented their soul to the core; he has outwitted and out-maneuvered them at every crossroad -- and now -- "our chance for vindication." Their mantra: Revenge at any cost.

Eric Boehlert of Media Matters writes:

President Obama's most fevered critics have been waiting for a national "aha" moment since he was first inaugurated more than 50 months ago. Coming off an electoral landslide, Obama was instantly greeted by a mob-like movement on the far right that denounced him as a socialist and a communist. Excited conservatives quickly reached for Nazi rhetoric and imagery in an effort to convey the dark threat the Democrat posed to the country.

Amplified by Fox News and a well-funded right-wing media industry, the "grassroots" revolt was portrayed as a sweeping rebuke of Obama. But in truth, the raging critics occupied the loud fringes, a fact confirmed by Obama's easy re-election. source

AND

Conservatives continue their Groundhog Day charade, reassuring themselves that the hearing was a hit and that scandal "bombshells" exploded on Capitol Hill. (They did not.)
The larger, common sense question that lingers though is, why? Why keep pounding a story so far into the ground that most news consumers can't even make sense of the convoluted allegations anymore?

I think the explanation for the durability is that Benghazi serves as an all-purpose platform that allows the most hardened critics to project their anti-Obama madness. It allows them to spin their ugliest fantasies about the president and to depict him as a heartless traitor who chose to let Americans die at the hands of Islamic terrorists. It's a way to condemn Obama for having a "reflexive impulse to blame, rather than defend, America."

For the last eight months, Benghazi has served as a convenient vessel to ferry around the right wing's Capt. Ahab-like obsession. Most often docked at Fox News, which has referenced "Benghazi" thousands and thousands and thousands of times since last September, the terror attack represents a way to feed that sinister fixation about the president being a Manchurian Candidate who let Americans die in Benghazi and "sacrificed American lives for politics."

Benghazi mania is driven by a dark obsession with Obama that's built upon the assumption that he's capable of the very worst and incapable of anything good or decent. That the President of the United States does not deserve to sit in the Oval Office because his loyalties (not to mention his origins) are in doubt. Which is supposedly why he would abandon Americans to die in Benghazi. source