Jason Chaffetz, grandstanding charlatan: What you need to know about the GOP’s shameless up-and-come [View all]

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Jason Chaffetz, grandstanding charlatan: What you need to know about the GOP’s shameless up-and-comer

by Heather Digby Parton at Salon

http://www.salon.com/2015/10/06/jason_chaffetz_grandstanding_charlatan_what_you_need_to_know_about_the_gops_shameless_up_and_comer/

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But as luck would have it, just as Chaffetz’s reputation looked to be seriously frayed, his star rose once again when the Washington Post reported that the director of the Secret Service had wanted to release personal information on Chaffetz in retaliation for his contentious oversight of the agency in the wake of the various tabloid scandals that have plagued it in recent years. Needless to say, civil libertarians and elected officials on both sides of the aisle were appalled by such an abuse of power and Chaffetz was back on TV, this time as the victim of government abuse, instead of as the abuser.

And then came presumptive Speaker, Kevin “Loose Lips Sink Ships” McCarthy, with his now-infamous admission that the Select Committee on Benghazi was a political enterprise which was being used to damage Hillary Clinton. (As he said to Jake Tapper on CNN: “Have the select committee get all the information, all the hearings, so the public can see that. You win the argument to win the vote.“)

It was already obvious that the select committee was misusing its authority since there had already been eight earlier investigations which had thoroughly examined the facts and issued numerous reports, but McCarthy’s admission pulled back the very thin veil of legitimacy and exposed the Republicans to charges of malfeasance. But among the first to rush to the cameras was none other than Jason Chaffetz, the man who had just hours before been justly railing against the Secret Service illegally using its authority to damage his reputation, defending the Benghazi committee for doing the same thing and criticizing his friend Kevin McCarthy for accidentally speaking the truth.

Everywhere you turned, it seemed Jason Chaffetz was on television, so much so that if you didn’t know better you might think he was running for speaker himself. Lo and behold, by the weekend, he was. A week that started off with him brow-beating the director of Planned Parenthood ended with him on “Fox News Sunday” and explaining to Politico that his rationale for running for Speaker was his superior communication skills. (And truthfully, compared to McCarthy, he’s Winston Churchill.)




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