Let me just add one more comment about Lamar Alexander, one that applies to South Carolina's Lindsay Graham as well. Both these men face re-election in 2014, and both have been marching steadily rightward as a result. Since both Tennessee and South Carolina are staunchly Republican these days, neither of them have much to fear when facing a Democrat in the 2014 general election. What they do fear is being "primaried," losing to an even more right-wing Tea Party style of Republican. Because 2014 is an off-year, the chances for a small, but highly mobilized block of ultra-conservatives could bring about their defeat. Whether such defeats would help the Democratic candidates in the general election as effectively as in the 2012 Indiana and Missouri Senate races is anyone's guess.
While Lamar Alexander decries video games, Lindsay Graham claims outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton "
got away with murder" over the Benghazi killings. No event in recent memory has occasioned more absurd theatrics among Republicans than the Benghazi killings. First we had the ridiculous pilloring of UN Ambassador Susan Rice by Graham and Arizona's grumpy old man John McCain for having followed the script she was given by the intelligence agencies when doing the rounds of the Sunday-morning talk shows in the aftermath of the murders. Last week's Senate
hearings with Mrs. Clinton were another sham, though you could see Rand Paul already preparing for his Presidential run in 2016.
Mrs. Clinton's
rehabilitation over the past four years has been stunning.