“I think when the media repeats the word ‘scandals’ you are repeating partisan lines. They are issues that have occurred that have to be addressed. I don’t think they rise to the level of a scandal,” he said. “We had a bunch of idiots at IRS in Cincinnati who didn’t know how to aggregate a flood of tax-exempt applications … but this is not some major scandal in the order of magnitude like Watergate. That’s absurd.”

Connolly was also critical of the way Republicans have investigated the terrorist attack in Benghazi that killed four Americans.

“Don’t get me wrong, Benghazi was a tragedy, but it has no traction. They can continue to talk about it to feed their base, they forget we have a base too. Everytime they do that they are firing up our base too and alienating moderate and swing voters.”

It’s a tack many of his Democratic colleagues in Congress are taking, shrugging off — or downplaying — the recent slate of scandal. If there was any fear that the continual hammering of the administration from House Republicans would hurt Democrats, the party’s members answered with a resounding no.