Is This PenisGate All Over Again? (With Update)

Anyone who lived through Bill Clinton's Lewinski Scandal probably remembers that Clinton maintained high approval ratings even through an impeachment process.  This was because most people realized at the time that the whole thing was politically motivated.

A similar thing appears to be happening with regard to all of Obama's recent "scandals" (via Steve Benen):

CNN released a poll yesterday showing Obama's approval rating going up, not down, reaching 53%. What's more, Gallup daily tracking put the president's standing at 47% a week ago, then reaching 51% on Saturday, before inching to 50% yesterday.

How is this possible given the media firestorm and the constant talk of a "White House in crisis"? It may have something to do with the fact that there are partisan differences in how the news is being perceived.

The problem for the Republicans is that they hate President Blackenstein so much that they are reacting to pretty much anything negative that occurs within the executive branch as if it is the biggest "scandal" in American history. Both Benghazi and the IRS "scandal" have been described by Republicans as "worse than Watergate." If you cry "wolf!" enough, people are going to stop listening.

So hate-filled are the Republicans toward Obama that they even released false versions of e-mails in order to make the Benghazi situation appear far worse than it was.  Needless to say -- when you have to falsify the record in order to create a scandal, there probably wasn't a scandal to begin with.

The average American hates shit like that because the average American doesn't invest a lot of time in hating the President.  But a good chunk of Republicans wake up every morning furious that we have a Black president and beside themselves in anger that things like Social Security, Medicare, and the Individual Health Care Mandate actually exist in this country (I've long found Republican anger over ObamaCare to be particularly hilarious given that the Individual Mandate was originally a GOP idea).

My advice to all these America haters?  Move to another country, but good luck finding an industrialized nation that doesn't have some form of government-supported health care for its people.

UPDATE:  Paul Brandus summed it all up this way:

One reason Republicans are so obsessed with exploiting these "scandals" is because the one issue that Americans truly care about — jobs and the economy — is getting better. *** Benghazi, a couple of rogue IRS employees in Cincinnati (working under a Bush appointee), or the Justice Department seizing records from the Associated Press (after Republicans asked the Justice Dept. to investigate leaks) -- they are all serious issues. But it seems Americans, at least for now, have bigger fish to fry.

Except perhaps for the President's killing of bin Laden, I can't think of anything that would infuriate Republicans more than an improving economy under Obama, given how much effort the GOP has expended to keep the economy in the shitter.