“This is a core competency question for the White House,” Cantor, the House majority leader, said in an interview with POLITICO Thursday. “And, as I have said before, this president seems to be in many areas in over his head. There are lots of issues of competency that are being raised right now about what’s going on in this government.”

With a touch more than five months until voters head to the ballot box, Republicans are beginning another chapter in the seemingly never-ending Obama scandal chronicles. The controversies have weaved a damaging narrative for the White House, and have the added benefit of distracting from the glacial legislative pace on Capitol Hill — a byproduct of a stiff partisan standoff between House Republicans and Senate Democrats.

To Republicans, Shinseki is fleeting — a figurehead who could be gone any moment. To push for his resignation lets Obama off the hook, they say. The focus on Obama is to fixate on the leader of the opposition party in the middle of an election year — and, better yet, a figure who will be around for the next two years. Concentrating on Obama helps continue the GOP’s narrative about an administration gone amok.