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South Carolina Republicans used Wednesday’s House hearing on Syria to act like children in front Secretary of State John Kerry, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Gen. Martin Dempsey. First, Joe Wilson, of “You life!” infamy, ironically accused the President of using Syria to distract from the fake scandals generated by Republicans — the IRS and Benghazi.

Wilson accused the President of using Syria to distract “… from the Benghazi, IRS, NSA scandals, the failure of Obamacare enforcement, the tragedy of the White House drafted sequestration or the upcoming debt limit vote.”

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He accused the President of having drafted the sequester as if Republicans were not pushing for sequestration for years before they finally got it, as if they hadn’t crowed about getting it as a big win for their side, and as if House Republicans were doing anything to avoid sequestration (they are not; they won’t even sit down for budget reconciliation).

Later, Representative Jeff Duncan, another South Carolina Republican, proved that he’s a Tea Party Republican when he brought up Benghazi, parroting the line Republicans have been repeating ad nauseam, that Obama had a “credibility” issue. (I warned you yesterday that this would be one of their absurd talking points to avoid answering the tough questions.)

Secretary of State John Kerry dismissed the conspiracy monger, saying, “We don’t deserve to drift this into yet another Benghazi discussion.” Kerry pointed out that he fought in Vietnam and said the debate was “not about getting into Syria’s civil war.”

The Teapublicans were not discouraged from treating the hearing as yet another opportunity to campaign, so they shamelessly used the death of one of the four who died in Benghazi, holding his picture up as if Duncan forgot that it was House Republicans who defunded Libya.

Sadly, with clowns like this taking up air space, real questions that need to be asked and answered lose valuable air time.