QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 9:54 A.M. ET:  The Republican establishment is wringing its hands.  It's always wringing its hands when some Republican gets an idea.  An idea?  Why the nerve.  How will this play at the country club?

We forget that the GOP establishment, in between treatments for hardening of the arteries, was panicked over the possible nomination of Ronald Reagan in 1980.  Establishment lords were do distraught that they tried to insert Gerald Ford onto the ticket as Reagan's vice president, to make sure that Reagan never did anything. 

Now the establishment whines again.  It seems that some Republicans are actually taking action.  They are actually bringing the fight to Barack Obama and his media cronies.  They are...they are...upsetting things.  But I'm glad to see some gutsy Republicans come alive.  Bill Kristol, at Weekly Standard, has it right: 

If you’re an establishment Republican, ripples of doubt are intruding on your normal placid contentment.

A special House committee to investigate Benghazi? Gee, is the public still interested in that? Isn’t it time to move on? And isn’t the chairman, Trey Gowdy, close to .  .  . shudder .  .  . the Tea Party?

An invitation to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak to Congress? Isn’t he kind of a polarizing figure? Couldn’t he lose his own election next week? Then how will we look? And wasn’t the protocol of the invite sort of mismanaged?

An open letter to the leaders of Iran on the nuclear deal? Isn’t that a touch unseemly? A tad presumptuous? A distraction from the serious debate we’re carefully teeing up for a few weeks or months from now? And look at all those attacks on Tom Cotton! Why didn’t they listen to the cooler conservative heads and grayer Republican beards whose advice has been so helpful in the past?

If brow-furrowing were thinking, the Republican establishment would be geniuses. If hand-wringing were prudence, GOP politicians would be exemplars of Aristotelian virtue. If tongue-clucking were eloquence, conservative elites would be orators for the ages.

But of course Trey Gowdy, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Tom Cotton have done more for conservative principles and Republican prospects in the last few weeks than the brow-furrowers, hand-wringers, and tongue-cluckers have done in years.

COMMENT:  It isn't that all the Republican moves are perfectly executed.  There has been some awkwardness.  But Republican actions have brought the debate over our disgraceful Iran policies front and center.  The public is engaged. 

And it is engaged on Hillary Clinton, finally, perhaps, understanding that Benghazi was the proverbial tip of the iceberg, and needs to be explored. 

Democratic response to Republican action has been predictable:  Who are these people who dare to question the wisdom of Barack?  They're us.

March 14,  2015