No one “in the know” is surprised that the Benghazi investigation was derailed by Republicans to attack Hillary Clinton. We take political divisiveness for granted.

First we had Kevin McCarthy, who was about to be elected as speaker of the house, suggesting that the he should be congratulated for getting the Benghazi investigation to go after Hillary for the email violation.

All this is despite the fact that her use of a private email server was very normal. Colin Powell used one. Howard Dean said a “tremendous number” of officials used them. And while Clinton has released thousands of emails as evidence, during the Bush administration, Powell and Rice did not, which looks to be a completely partisan double-standard.

Then the Republicans’s stopped backing him to be Speaker of the House. Comments by him and others suggest it was because he had spilled the truth in admitting the committee was a witch-hunt aimed at Hillary, not about finding the truth.

The whole email “scandal” has been shown to be business as usual.

In general, everyone inside Washington knows this, and non-Republicans suspect it. My guess is that other Republicans either 1) hold their nose and shake their heads, 2) figure the ends (defeating Clinton) justify the means (shirking their duty to seek the truth, using their government positions for party purposes), or 3) believe it, and have their glee at Hillary’s bad news keep them from seeing, or minding, the corruption.

But it gave an ex-staffer, Major Bradley Podliska, reason to believe he could help the truth be told, so he admitted it as well, even though it has now focused the Republican machine on discrediting him.  See also this article in Politico.

While many shrug this off as the essence of American politics, we could also look at it as a sign of the deep dysfunction in our political system.

George Washington knew the parties “had previously, and would again, grow seeking more power than other groups to the detriment of the whole…. Washington was aware that other governments viewed political parties as destructive because of the temptation to manifest and retain power, but also because they would often seek to extract revenge on political opponents.”

This seems rampant in the parties. The Democrats love finding fault with the Republicans, and the Republican Party seems wedded to a strategy of demonizing Democrat leaders, especially the President. Meanwhile, neither party is embracing true reforms to make Congress less partisan.  And, there are a lot of  them.