The Secret Service, the White House, the tan suit, Ebola, and Republican attack opportunists

The Ebola virus has African origins. Our

president's lineage is half African. Therefore

as any good Republican can see, err, ahh...

The Republican penchant for attacking the president – on any grounds, on flimsy grounds, on no rational grounds whatsoever – is getting a tad tiresome.

It started with that socialistic, communistic, fascistic, maybe even Muslimistic (not to mention totally totalitarian) idea that was the crown jewel of the Obama administration: seeing to it that as many Americans as possible had health care coverage. O, the horror of it all! 

Even to this day, Kentucky Republican Senator Mitch McConnell is running for re-election on a promise to repeal that accursed law and throw us back to the tender mercies of the greedy insurance companies. They will, he implies, do as right by us as they always have in the past because, uh, Freedom.

The American public has also endured Republicans foaming at the mouth concerning, uh, well let’s call them (and this is only a partial list) Benghazigate, Birthergate, Golfgate, Vacationgate, and what until now has been my all-time favorite. 

TanSuitgate 

TanSuitgate was when Republican Congressman Peter King launched into a vicious attack on President Obama for wearing a tan suit to a press conference. Then, facing withering scorn for his own idiocy, King walked it back maybe, oh a half step or so, and insisted he was only speaking in metaphors. Metaphors? Isn't that actually Congresspeak for speaking in tongues? 

For the record, here’s one of the Congressman’s kingly "metaphors" on what clearly, from his enraged tone, must have been nearly an act of treason by Obama:

“There’s no way I don’t think any of us can excuse what the president did yesterday,” King said.  “You have the whole world watching, you have a week, two weeks of anticipation of what the United States is going to do and then for him to walk out — I’m not trying to be trivial here — in a light suit, a light tan suit.”

So why am I not amazed, or even slightly surprised, that the Republicans are barking and snapping like a pack of rabid Yorkshire terriers because the Secret Service is is falling down on its job of protecting him?

Yes, we should all be concerned about lapses in the President’s security. And yes, the Secret Service needs a cataclysmic culture change to get the problem fixed. But some professions of concern over the president’s security by all the folks who’ve been trying to bring him down for the past two terms strikes me as a bit, eh, shall we say disingenuous?

 When Congressman Darrell Issa, the would-be scourge of President Obama, attacks the Secret Service for not adequately protecting Obama, one has to think his secret hope is that some of the mud flung at the secret service will instead stick to the President.

As the Fiscal Times reports:

Rep. Darrell Issa’s two terms as chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform have been marked by hearings on issues that seemed to greatly excite members of the hard right, Issa himself (R-CA) and the anti-Obama element of the Republican Party. Until now, Chairman Issa’s tendency to work himself into high dudgeon over scandals, including the “Fast and Furious” investigation and Lois Lerner’s IRS emails have failed to get real traction with the broader American public.

This morning, however, given the latest news reports about the severity of the Secret Service’s lapses in protecting the White House, Issa might finally get what he seems to have wanted all along – the chance to indulge in some high-profile righteous anger that has the sentiment of the American people behind it.

And now, the E-bomb

Now the latest stink bomb in the Republican arsenal is emerging. Ebola. You see, the E-bomb is all Obama’s fault. 

Many Republicans—and conservative media outlets—are also now hitting the president for thus far refusing to block flights to the U.S. from those nations, something some European countries have done.

Of course, if we block air traffic to the affected African countries and fail to send medical assistance to the areas where Ebola has reached epidemic proportions, the epidemic will inevitably spread faster, likely evolving into a worldwide pandemic that could cripple the United States.

Meanwhile, we’d have more and more, longer and longer delays at American airports, more and more angry passengers, more and more financial losses.

But of course, that would have to be the President’s fault, too.