Ever since Watergate, it has been the practice to name each new scandal with a -gate suffix: Travelgate, Filegate, Thisgate and Thatgate. The reason? Watergate was the benchmark for scandals.
However, Obama has broken new ground in scandals, so I propose a new suffix: -ghazi. Not only is Obama unparalleled in the brazenness of the scandals, but the denials and the cover-ups strain credibility to the point where calling it a “-gate” no longer suffices. And the skill in orchestrating these scandals is unparalleled in American history. As Bill Kristol wrote a couple of weeks ago in the Weekly Standard, Obama is no Nixon. I had been Chairman of Utah Youth for Nixon in 1968 and remember well how awful I felt when I finally had to come to grips in 1973 with Nixon’s dishonesty. It was an awful thing, and deserves its place in history. But Obama has surpassed Nixon several times over. Not only has he bungled and lied and covered up, but he has been able to command astounding discipline from those who surround him. Nixon had key members of his administration turn against him. Obama has not only kept his people in line, he has, until recently, kept the press in line. And the magnitude of the scandals has surpassed that of Nixon by a good order of magnitude. A burglary is awful. IRS audits of political enemies are shameful. But with Obama we have an ambassador assassinated, assault rifles being delivered to Mexican drug cartels, and the institutionalizing of the intimidation of the opposition by the IRS. It is totally unfair to Obama to compare him with an amateur like Nixon.
And for this supreme scandal skill, the least we can do is coin a new suffix in his honor. So let’s roll out -ghazi.
So we can have the Benghazi scandal, the AP phone-ghazi scandal, the James Rosen-ghazi scandal, the Fast and Furious-ghazi scandal, the IRS-ghazi scandal, and so forth. We can maybe still use -gate for the more amateurish scandals and save -ghazi for those with higher degrees of professionalism like that displayed by the Obama administration and their accomplices in the media.
It’s the fortieth anniversary of Watergate. It’s time we update our language.
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Congratulations! The suffix -ghazi is almost halfway to being accepted by the general public in Obama’s honour, just as you asked! Soon it will refer to any politically-motivated fake scandal. We could really have used it during Whitewaterghazi.
Comment by David Hall:
One thing that is amazing about leftists is their ability to deny, in some cases facts that are right before their faces: There was no targeting of conservatives by the IRS, Obama was right when he said that if you liked your health care plan you could keep it, Obamacare won’t add one dime to the deficit, the Koran doesn’t say anything about killing non-believers, Al Gore didn’t say in 2006 that we have only ten years left before the earth turns into a total frying pan, okay the earth’s not warming any more but man is going to increase the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from four ten-thousandths to five ten thousandths and that is going to cause floods and droughts, hurricanes and earthquakes and blizzards, etc., etc. – the list is endless.
I’d be curious, though, Sandy, to know what part of the Benghazi scandal you’re denying. Are you denying that four Americans were killed? Or are you saying that our government was correct in saying that it was a spontaneous protest inspired by a nasty video about Mohammed? Or is it that the mixup about the talking points was just a bunch of typographical errors? Or are you saying that all this happened and there was lax security and no one was sent in to rescue our people but that it’s all Bush’s fault? Or that a lot of stuff went wrong, but at this point, what difference does it make? And that’s why the administration isn’t providing anyone with the information they’re asking for? Just curious.