Trey Gowdy: “You were supposed to provide oversight”
This video of Trey Gowdy speaking to the press on Benghazi demonstrates a few things simultaneously.
The first is why Gowdy was a very successful prosecutor. The second is that the manner in which the Obama administration has handled the Benghazi debacle is an outrage and a disgrace. And the third is how negligent and/or collusive with that administration the press has been in covering (or rather, covering up) the Benghazi incident.
If it were possible for the press to reflect and to feel shame, Gowdy’s words would make them do that and feel that. But I’m afraid it’s not.
I don’t remember the first time I ever saw Gowdy, but I do remember thinking that he was a bit strange-looking. But when he opened his mouth and spoke, it almost immediately struck me that he was one of the smartest and most articulate members of Congress I’d ever heard. And nothing I’ve ever heard him say since then has disabused me of that notion.
I listed three things the video demonstrated. But I’d like to offer a fourth: how rare and refreshing it is to hear a politician speaking with clarity, focus, brains, and conviction.
Craig Livingstone must have missed Gowdy’s FBI files and it takes time to make stuff up.
Amen.
Can you imagine Gowdy as Attorney General? Yeah, me neither, not with so many RINO squishes around. But were he ever to become Attorney General, it would be an unending lesson in how to do that job, as opposed to how Eric the Red has turned the position into the legal social justice arm of a tyrannical government.
“Rare and refreshing” is perfectly put. Trey bien!
The youtube archivists dug up a lot of this guy’s speeches to Congress committees over the years.
I really like how he approached it – by asking all of the basic, still unanswered questions to the press instead of outright condemning them. More powerful to shame them with their own ignorance.
I think he inspired Fox’s Chris Wallace, who took this same approach w/his Democrat guest last week. The guest said there had been enough investigation already, and Wallace’s response was something like, “Really? So you know where Obama was throughout the evening of the attack and who he talked to?”
Holder’s DOJ merely exists to *stick it to the Man*
What Gowdy lacks in *typical looks* he makes up in
atypical brains. He speaks with confidence & gives the impression it would be hard to compromise him.
We live in NH but Hubby & I have been looking around for a
pro Trey Gowdy bumper sticker ! Got to spread the *word*.
AMEN, N-Neocon!!
“…Sec’y of State said she doesn’t like Sunday talk-shows…They must be the ONLY talk-shows she doesn’t like.” Trey Gowdy…
Hardly more than 3-minutes of direct, unvarnished Truth to the MSM-Lapdogs and absolutely ON TARGET Truth. Pravda aka NYTimes will get all stern and harpy to Tray on tomorrow’s editorial page.
Love this guy … Trey Gowdy but here’s how I see it. He won’t convince “ANYONE that counts” with the facts (aka dems, MSM) that’s not already convinced that O’s admins, Hillary etc lied their @ss off.
MSM will portray him as partision repub hack and that will be enough for any dem to dismiss anything that comes out of this hearing. MSM will protect O and by all means necessary (spin, deflect and out right lie) to protect Hillary more than ever.
Yes, they’ve “evolved” beyond “shame”, as well as “freedom” and “dignity”. Too many bracketing quote marks, but that’s what happens when you enter into contact with and try to describe the postmodern mind.
Humans who shrug at the notion of “truth”, who see the end as justifying the means, who believe that all moral actions are purely situational, and find personal honor a ridiculous concept, are incapable of any kind of meaningful sense of moral shame in the first place.
Were the Stalinists ashamed of lying? As you repeatedly point out, of course they were not. Their only concern was, as numerous media figures now openly admit is the case with themselves, to push a society shaping agenda.
They can only lose face or status with their peers; and they do not consider those outside the collaborationist media, i.e., those who are the target of the collaborationist media’s directive efforts, as peers.
When you look at Pajama Boy, or some of the other faces of the leftist message machine, you know that you are dealing with a kind of being which is operating out of another moral universe entirely.
“Can you imagine Gowdy as Attorney General?”
You can bet your @ss the MSM would earn their money then. They would be all over him like white on rice!
I’m a huge Trey Gowdy fan. Smart, quick, aggressive. We so need people like him on our side, instead of mealy-mouthed, dim, passive Republicans who get devoured by unscrupulous Dems.
I thought that his looks were unfortunate, like something out of Deliverance, but he has a much better haircut now. It balances his delicate features and makes him almost handsome.
To repeat an old remark and observation. Thirty years ago or so when I was in college I was watching the CBC as they hosted a panel of legal commentators holding forth on the pending Canadian Charter of Rights.
Justice Willard Esty [who apparently had attended Harvard in the US] pointed out that it meant the virtual end of stare decisis in Canada, and could result in a situation where there is no settled law.
An advocate of the Charter stated that The Charter would advance the cause of certain values and that these values were right because “it is who we are”. A nice piece of circular reasoning, and one that is familiar to anyone who has read the now common references by left-progressives on campus to “building the community we want” as the sole justification for their aims.
His warning and her hopes both seem to have been borne out,
“The Use of United States Decisions by the Supreme Court of Canada under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms” Author(s): Christopher P. Manfred iReviewed work(s):Source: Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique, Vol. 23,No. 3 (Sep., 1990), pp. 499-518
Great stuff. And it’s very satisfying to hear this coming from someone who can speak American English without an accent…
What I don’t understand is why it’s just now appearing on the radar. It’s my understanding that this is from a press conference held back in October 2013.
Very poignant point, DNW.
O Canada
O Canada!
Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all thy sons command.
With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free!
From far and wide,
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
God keep our land glorious and free!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
Hmmm, who was standing guard? Not the diversity multicultural crowd. If Hitler came back, it would be as a diverse multiculturalist, probably black with a Muslim sounding name.
Trey Gowdy, like Rush Limbaugh, makes it look easy, but it’s not!
If you can’t trust Obama to protect his ambassador, how can you trust him to provide medical treatment for his soldiers? And if you can’t trust him on that, well . . . do you still have confidence in Obamacare?
Yesterday I asked my good Muslim friend, the part store owner/shopkeeper, if abortion was okay. He replied very strongly, No. Do you know Obama’s position on abortion, I asked? He stopped. In other words, his mental process was challenged.
Just trying to be a little Trey Gowdy in my part of the world.
Come up with your own TGQ (Trey Gowdy Questions).
The way of the warrior.com.makeithappen.
carl in atlanta:
That’s interesting. I hadn’t realized it was an old video. I see now it’s from last October.
My guess as to why it’s coming out now is that Gowdy is in the news much more now because of this new committee and his being named to head it.
mizpants:
Yes, the haircut is better now. That funny pointy thing was funny and pointy.
Update: Just heard Rush say something about this YouTube video; sounded like he’s going to discuss it during the last hour of his show today.
The Left normally is very strong in the areas they have conditioned their propaganda defenses for. But that means they are exceptionally vulnerable to shock and damage in the areas they haven’t conditioned for, such as certain questions.
It requires them to think about how to answer them in a way that makes people look good, and the Left’s propaganda functions on CENTRALIZED principles, not bottom up initiative. They’re not good at thinking on their feet, because they never did do that.
That’s not enough to hold the Obama administration to proper account in the court of public opinion.
And that’s not Trey Gowdy’s fault. His Socratic questioning matches the purpose and scope of a formal investigatory body like Gowdy’s special committee.
However, in the youtube clip, Gowdy exhorts the media, which is an action to promote the social-political effect in the court of public opinion.
Although inductive Socratic questioning is a tool for court argument, a jury trial requires that a litigator (as opposed to an investigator) proffer a deductive theory of the case, a narrative arc.
Gowdy doesn’t proffer a theory of the case, a narrative arc, in the youtube clip. Nor, properly, should he have done so in his position as chair of a new investigatory committee. He already pushed though didn’t cross the ethical borders of his position with this appeal to the media.
The responsibility to advance a theory of the case for the court of public opinion, a narrative arc for the zeitgeist, is an activist function. That’s not Gowdy’s job. The responsibility for activism belongs to the people.
Why is Gowdy’s Socratic questioning insufficient to generate greater effect in the court of public opinion?
Simple: The predominance of the false narrative of the Iraq mission determines the public weight of the issue viz the Democrats’ pegging defense strategy that no matter Obama’s failures, Bush was worse.
An example is Russ Douthout’s Sunday NY Times column that criticizes Obama’s foreign policy but excuses Obama’s failure with:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/opinion/sunday/douthat-grading-obamas-foreign-policy.html
Note that Douthout is supposed to be a representative voice of the Right. The comments, of course, follow Douthout’s line of thought excusing Obama.
So, the issue really is this simple:
In order for the Obama administration to be held to proper account for the Benghazi controversy in the court of public opinion, the popular narrative of the Iraq mission must be corrected in the zeitgeist.
If there is no popular contextual reframe that Bush was right and justified on Iraq, then Gowdy’s special committee can find the Obama administration at fault on every question, yet the finding will carry light weight in social-political effect.
Right now, you believe that Gowdy is prosecuting the equivalent of a felony.
You’re wrong.
As long as the contextual frame for the Benghazi controversy is the false narrative of the Iraq mission, in the court of public opinion, Gowdy will only be prosecuting the equivalent of a misdemeanor equivalent at best, and more likely, the equivalent of an administrative law issue rather than a criminal issue.
Whenever I hear people say – many of them supposedly on our side – that “Both sides do it”…..I am reminded once again that lies come in many forms. That is one of the major lies told today – that both sides are the same.
Ymarsakar: “But that means they are exceptionally vulnerable to shock and damage in the areas they haven’t conditioned for, such as certain questions.”
They can defend against those questions by controlling the frame, so even if they lose the particular debate on all points, the meta effect is contained.
Fix: NY Times columnist Ross Douthat, not ‘Russ Douthout’.
“If it were possible for the press to reflect and to feel shame, Cowdy’s words would make them do that and feel that. But I’m afraid it’s not.”
Would that it were so.
I thought it would be interesting to see if there was a response or any shame exhibited anywhere by the press, but when it was revealed that this video was from October the answer was obvious — none at all.
In the mid seventies to mid eighties I was a real political junkie. I remember listening to speeches by Reagan, Gingrich, and even McCain. They used simple words to express powerful ideas. And they were spoken with courage and conviction. In the early nineties there was the same from Boehner.
All but Reagan abandoned those ideas at some point.
I am impressed by Gowdy. I pray that he won’t be victim to the DC disease and that he will indeed stay to true to himself and to the ideas on which this nation was founded.
Every Tea Partier in the land is for Gowdy. As to the Tea Parties’ past electoral difficulties, contrast Gowdy with Jeb Bush, Christie, Ryan, and all the other GOP waffleballers.
Gowdy has what we need in a POTUS dedicated to taking our country back. As Neo says, “how rare and refreshing it is to hear a politician speaking with clarity, focus, brains, and conviction,” convictions with which we all agree.
Don Carlos you are correct. Gowdy is real. He is true blue. There still are such people.
Let this man do his job. He’s Eliot Ness. What we need is the Sean Connery character and we’re good to go.
Very impressive. The comment about Hillary Clinton and talk shows was unnecessarily snarky. Probably true, but still snarky and irrelevant. But I’m nitpicking.
I’ve long pleaded for modesty and low expectations when it comes to members of congress. One of my (friendly) criticisms of the Tea Party movement is that many tea partiers hold out too much hope and expectation for their congressional candidates. Even when their candidate of choice wins, he or she often is acclimated to the DC culture soon enough to disappoint in one way or another. It’s not that they’re rotten people; many are highly principled. But, quite frankly, most members of congress will lose (even inadvertently) some of their principles once they are ingratiated into the culture. This transcends party.
However, there are precious few exceptions. I believe Gowdy is one of them (having a safe seat helps). This commentary was exactly on point and of the appropriate tone for the situation at hand: definitive, but not preachy; indignant, but not bombastic. His was a challenge to the MSM; unstated but implied was the following message. There was a time where you, MSM, would not let ANY president (party and ideology aside) off so easily. You have sold your integrity to an administration who cares little about you and offers even less in return. Think about that.
Gowdy’s three minute speech encapsulates why so many on the left are histrionic about the mere existence of the select committee. “Elliot Ness” is a fairly apt analogy. A dogged, unwavering pursuit of the facts, wherever they may lead, without flair, without grandstanding…they absolutely abhor the prospect. I will just repeat: I hope Gowdy is aware and understands how rough this may become. I’m not sure he is, but I will say: if anyone can handle the hurricane a brewing, it’s Trey Gowdy.
I’ve been saying (to no one of note) that we’re just going to be Jack Nicholson at the end of “The Pledge” on Benghazi, knowing the truth and muttering to ourselves quietly while the world moves on.
“Can you imagine Gowdy as Attorney General?”
How about POTUS? Seriously, is there any prospective candidate Democrat OR Republican who is obviously better?
The best thing about this video is that he goes directly after the MFM. I believe that a lot of the problems of the Republican party are caused directly by the refusal to acknowledge openly just how biased and dishonest most of the press is. They need to be called on it and the consequences be damned because otherwise it will never end.
Yeah, I think you are being nitpicky.
I have no trouble with such snark or mockery. It’s long past time the left is fought with the same weapons they use on the right. This is an existential battle for the Nation’s soul and no quarter should be given. Hillarity! needs to be mocked mercilessly for her ‘At this point, what difference does it make?’ statement. She needs to be mocked mercilessly for her sudden head injury right before she was to testi-lie before Congress, trying to gin up some sympathy while not answering a damn thing. Again, no quarter should be given. President If You Like Your Plan certainly never lets up with his lying mockery and outright denigration of his political enemies, and neither should we. Think of it as the new normal, brought to you by the left.
Think about it: When was the last time you heard or saw coverage of an anti-war protest? Or how about the media reporting on a ‘grim milestone’? Hold the media’s and the lefty politicians’ feet to the fire. Alinsky the shyte out of their hypocrisy as it is so easy to do as the examples of their hypocrisy are everywhere. The RINOs like to play nerfball while the left throws baseballs at our heads. We need pitchers willing to throw the high hard brush back pitches. And if there happens to be a Tony C that gets nailed, oh well. It’s not like I’m going to shed any tears.
Sorry, but the media didn’t sell anything. They willingly became American Pravda, which makes their actions all the more appalling considering their Constitutional protections.
No, not POTUS, at least not yet. I’ll go with Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) as my first choice at the present time. I want an executive with leadership skills who has a proven track record of getting positive things done. Scott Walker fits that bill nicely. He also makes lefty heads explode. Win-win!
RickZ, Walker has been my choice so far for the same reasons as yours. Walker-Gowdy?
FOAF,
Were Walker to win, I’d much rather have Gowdy as Attorney General and drain the f-cking commie agenda-driven swamp that is the current Dept. of Social Injustice. I (so far) trust him to prosecute the Laws of this land in a fair and impartial manner, showing no favoritism for ‘his’ people (which would, supposedly, be me). Of course, the Dems would never go for that as they know just how criminal they are. But I can dream.
Let this man do his job. He’s Eliot Ness. What we need is the Sean Connery character and we’re good to go.
I wouldn’t say that yet. People are powerless by themselves. Power is not something tied to their personality.
When the Left is hit in an area they weren’t expecting, they take enormous damage before they go into the defensive siege mode, ala ACORN.
But when they craft a narrative ahead of time, because they engineer the disaster such as in Iraq or Benghazi or Libya, then they take almost no damage.
There’s a big difference between a person blocking the hit, and taking almost no damage, and a person blocking it hate and taking the first 3 hits as criticals.
Yeah, Neo, it was the Hair. Glad he got that haystack mowed!
And he comes from my home town: Greenville, South Carolina! (also the home of another famous Republican, James Brown, the hardest-workin’ man in show business). Yes, friends, James Brown was a Republican.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pvIarW3xHg