I may be in denial, but I have felt that Republicans are overplaying their hand on the triple play "scandals."
Stu Rothenberg, a cautious and obsessively non-partisan Washington political analyst, wrote Thursday that:
It’s hard to overstate the potential significance of the past week. What we are witnessing is nothing less than a dramatic reversal of the nation’s political narrative — from how bad the Republican brand is and how President Barack Obama is going to mobilize public opinion against the GOP in the midterm elections to whether the Obama administration has become so arrogant that it believes it can stonewall Congress and the public.
The series of revelations presents an unflattering picture of an administration that just 10 days ago looked poised and confident. Now it looks out of touch and unresponsive.
The danger for Obama, of course, is that many Americans will start to doubt his administration’s veracity and values. If that happens — and for now it is only a danger, not an inevitability — then the president could well turn into a serious liability for Democrats in next year’s elections.
Of course, the day before, Rothenberg wrote that many Republicans seem to be denial about how badly their brand has been damaged, for presidential election purposes, by Tea Partification, as symbolized by a recent surge of enthusiasm for Sen. Ted Cruz as a possible 2016 nominee.