Have Congressional Republicans found their next witch hunt?
While the Select Benghazi Committee continues to waste time and money, Senate Republicans are planning to hold ‘robust hearings’ concerning Cuba.
“What you’re going to see in the Foreign Relations Committee is a robust set of hearings around all of this. Not just the issue of the administration’s policies but the embargo itself. This has not been top of mind,” [chairman] Corker said at the joint Senate-House Republican retreat at the Hershey Lodge. […]
“First thing I want to understand is what the administration is attempting to do, what the Castro administration is looking to do — behavioral change, in regard — and then we can look at the bigger policies.”
It seems obvious to me that we’re ending a half-century old embargo because it hasn’t produced results and because it’s inhumane and uncivilized, but who knows? Maybe the president and the Castro administration are working in cahoots to sneak socialism across the gulf and into America.
I’ll allow that it’s possible the intent of these hearings is benign, but recent history tells us they will be anything but.
Chairman Corker would not say if he thinks the embargo should be reinstated but, if recent statements from several Republican presidential hopefuls are any indication, the GOP may campaign on reinstating the embargo in 2016 and these ‘robust hearings’ could drag out for the next two years. Senators who’ve been infuriated by the administration’s actions will surely want to have their 15 minutes of grandstanding.
Spending the next two years on a non-scandal wouldn’t be unprecedented. Congressional Republicans spent an equal or greater amount of time on Solyndra, Fast and Furious, and the IRS. We’re still on Benghazi.