Photo by Justin LoFranco

In a broad turnabout, the fortunes of California Republicans in Congress have waned as conservatives on the Hill have gained the advantage.

The shift, which began with Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., withdrawing abruptly from a race for Speaker he had seemed certain to win, has sidelined other members of the GOP’s California delegation. “Despite his lead over other candidates,” the Los Angeles Daily News recalled, “McCarthy had failed to win over a small but crucial bloc in the House GOP: the hardline Freedom Caucus. This group of 30-plus uncompromising conservatives drove Boehner to resign by threatening a floor vote on his speakership. On the eve of [the] vote they announced they would oppose Boehner’s No.2, McCarthy, and back one of his rivals instead, Rep. Daniel Webster of Florida, a former speaker of the Florida House.”

Fresh fissures

Rather than hinging on ideology, tough tactics have been largely responsible for the obdurate reputation the Freedom Caucus has made for itself. Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., recently announced his withdrawal from the Caucus — despite sterling conservative credentials on the Hill. “A charter member of the House Freedom Caucus when it began earlier this year, McClintock quit the group last month,” as McClatchy reported. “Just last year, the American Conservative Union had given him a 99 percent lifetime support score. Only one House of Representatives Republican was more consistent.”

In an interview with the wire, McClintock said of the Freedom Caucus that “their tactics have become counterproductive for the enactment of a conservative agenda,” singling out its “opposition to a trade bill and its willingness to shut down the federal government over Planned Parenthood funding.” Although those issues have emerged as important to a slice of the Republican base often associated with the Tea Party, the Caucus has come under fire more for using them as wedges to weaken and challenge the establishment GOP leadership in Congress.

Political blowback

But the establishment’s own political acumen — or lack thereof — has fueled the sense among Tea Party sympathizers that the Freedom Caucus has no choice but to combat the sitting GOP leadership. Rep. McCarthy’s unforced error on the Benghazi investigation, which he touted as an effective political weapon against Hillary Clinton, became a sizable boon for Democrats.

For some California conservatives, insult was added to injury when the Golden State’s Congressional Democrats like Rep. Adam Schiff and Rep. Linda Sanchez seized on the opportunity to raise their own profiles during the suddenly beleaguered hearing. “The kind of spotlight Schiff and Sanchez enjoyed Thursday is rare for California lawmakers, particularly those in densely populated Southern California, which has an ultra-competitive media market,” according to the Los Angeles Times. “Such visibility can be helpful for someone like Schiff, who has served in Congress for nearly 15 years and is well-respected by colleagues, but whose name recognition is lower than more prominent members of the delegation.”

Ballot blues

The political crossfire has troublesome implications for the coming election cycle in California, where state Republicans have grown increasingly desperate to field candidates capable of notching some wins. “The National Republican Congressional Committee sent a staffer out to the Golden State last week to search for and meet with potential candidates and convince them to run in competitive districts in San Diego, Palm Springs and Sacramento, according to a source with knowledge of the visit,” Roll Call recently reported. “But after a string of losses in the state, multiple Republican strategists in California are pessimistic about the GOP’s ability to recruit top-tier challengers, especially for 2016, when presidential-year turnout is expected to benefit Democrats.”

While national conservatives have blamed the state GOP’s drift away from core principle, California Republicans have pointed the finger at the kind of truculence they say defines the Freedom Caucus. State GOP consultant Richard Temple told Roll Call “a major problem for Republican candidates running in the state is that they are weighed down by the national GOP’s brand. He said the image could be fixed if the field of candidates Republicans recruit reflected the party’s growing diversity, but he said without donors believing those candidates can win, getting them to run will be hard,” the site noted.

But the Los Angeles Times editorial page has long bought the idea that the real scandal about Benghazi is that the Republicans tried to make an issue out of it during the 2012 presidential race and that House oversight committee chairman Darrell Issa, R-Vista, has kept demanding more answers from the Obama administration. This is from a sanctimonious May editorial after the White House finally released emails related to Benghazi after eight months of stalling:

“On Monday, an exasperated Obama, referring to the emails, said: ‘There’s no ‘there’ there.’ The same is true of the allegation of a broader Benghazi coverup. And now that we know, let’s move on.”

This lap-doggery from most of the media inspired the president’s jab earlier this week that the Republicans were obsessed with “phony scandals.” That he did so even as his administration stonewalled IRS probes is insulting. But Barack Obama might be regretting the claim now that CNN has figured out a key part of the Benghazi mystery: who is driving the cover up.

“CNN has uncovered exclusive new information about what is allegedly happening at the CIA, in the wake of the deadly Benghazi terror attack.

“Four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, were killed in the assault by armed militants last September 11 in eastern Libya.

“Sources now tell CNN dozens of people working for the CIA were on the ground that night, and that the agency is going to great lengths to make sure whatever it was doing, remains a secret. CNN has learned the CIA is involved in what one source calls an unprecedented attempt to keep the spy agency’s Benghazi secrets from ever leaking out.

“Since January, some CIA operatives involved in the agency’s missions in Libya, have been subjected to frequent, even monthly polygraph examinations, according to a source with deep inside knowledge of the agency’s workings. The goal of the questioning, according to sources, is to find out if anyone is talking to the media or Congress.

“It is being described as pure intimidation, with the threat that any unauthorized CIA employee who leaks information could face the end of his or her career. In exclusive communications obtained by CNN, one insider writes, ‘You don’t jeopardize yourself, you jeopardize your family as well.'”

Will Times finally now acknowledge Benghazi coverup?

Will the Los Angeles Times still pretend Benghazi isn’t a true scandal featuring a massive coverup?

Of course. That’s what lapdogs do.

Good for Jake Tapper and CNN. In a shocking development, they did their jobs, even though it embarrassed the Democrat in the White House.

By Chris Reed

The best “Hogan’s Heroes” in-joke of all time:

As a libertarian who still seethes over Newt Gingrich’s and George W. Bush’s betrayal of small-government conservatism, I have tons of issues with the modern Republican Party. But I have to say the GOP has my sympathy most national elections because of my incensed reaction to the heavy-handed bias of the national media.

Here we go again.

Who could have imagined that 2012’s October surprise would be the mainstream media simply choosing to ignore a huge geopolitical scandal on the president’s watch? It is now a matter of public record that within a day of the Sept. 11 murders of four Americans in Benghazi, the administration had vast signs it was an organized act of terror. Yet two weeks later, in a speech to the U.N., Barack Obama repeatedly suggested it was a spontaneous assault triggered by a YouTube video.

This is cut and dried — an administration caught peddling lies to cover up incompetence and worse. This isn’t complex. It’s Scandal 101.

But not according to ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Occasionally, when I kid a liberal member of the media about how in the tank the national media are, I get an honest acknowledgement that this is undeniable.

But sometimes I get pushback. The last few weeks, whenever that has happened, I’ve sent along a transcript of ABC News’ coverage of the aftermath of the first debate. Why? To highlight George Stephanopolous’ “analysis”:

STEPHANOPOLOUS:  Does a tie go to the challenger?

Wow. The pivotal event that revived Mitt Romney and made this a very, very close election, and within minutes of its conclusion, ABC News is spinning it as a tie. Is Stephanopolous the Greek word for Maviglio?

But that’s just one journalist. The media’s de facto/tacit cover-up of the administration’s Benghazi cover-up involves literally dozens of journalists at many different institutions suddenly deciding to go soft on a debacle at the upper reaches of the U.S. government so as to protect the guilty. It’s a sad comment on American journalism.

And maybe I’m naive, but I still have been surprised by this. Benghazi, I thought, was too big a screw-up to be ignored. Even when they were inclined to be in the tank, there were standards, I thought, for the well-educated, highly paid, prideful Washington media.

Boy, was I wrong.