Jay Carney: It’s absurd for the GOP to politicize these scandals that my side would surely politicize under a Republican president

Skip to 4:39 below for a little Friday evening fake outrage, White House style. The gist:

Asked by CBS News’ Bill Plante whether, considering also the General Services Administration investigation, there’s been a “breakdown” in the White House’s oversight of federal agencies — as Palin, Sen. Jeff Sessions, and others have suggested — Carney replied, “Any assertion by those politicians that you mentioned should be valued by the cost that you paid for it. It is preposterous to politicize the Secret Service, to politicize the behavior of the terrible conduct of some soldiers in Afghanistan, in a war that has been going on for ten years.”…

“I think on the face of it is a ridiculous assertion that trivializes both the very serious nature of the endeavor that our military is engaged in in Afghanistan and the very serious nature both of the work the Secret Service does, the apolitical nature of the institution, and the seriousness of the investigation underway with regard to the Secret Service and the military and the incident in Colombia,” Carney said.

What do you think? Do you think the left and its media allies might weave a narrative or two if, under President Romney, in the span of a few weeks (a) a Secret Service advance team embarrassed the country by hiring hookers (three more agents resigned today), (b) the head of GSA had to resign due to obscenely lavish spending on a conference, and (c) photos of U.S. troops posing with jihadis corpses in Afghanistan surfaced? The “administration in chaos” headlines would fly, er, fast and furious instead of sporadic items like this that acknowledge Obama’s political problems from the scandals while spinning on his behalf. You don’t even need to bother with GSA and the Secret Service for this thought experiment, in fact. Imagine if Romney had doubled down on Afghanistan by sending tens of thousands of extra troops and then, after a few years of drift and Karzai corruption, suddenly we were hit by trophy photos, Koran-burnings, riots, fraggings, and finally an honest to goodness rampage by an American soldier. There’d be a lot of angry rhetoric out there about chickenhawks and empire and the length of deployments and the culture of wingnut warmongering that makes horrors like this possible. You don’t hear much of that now — and we all know why — but we will again just as soon as being anti-war becomes politically advantageous again for Democrats. So, with that in mind, enjoy Carney’s outrageous outrage, which wasn’t even the dumbest thing he said at today’s presser.

• Quotes of the day
• “Experienced Democrats” whispering that it might be time for Holder to go
• Carney: No, seriously, Obama’s lawyer didn’t tell him that the IRS was targeting tea partiers when she found out; Update: Obama’s chief of staff was told?

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