Republicans worry fellow Republicans may screw up the political gift of controversies. | AP Photos Why the GOP thinks it could blow it

Republicans are worried one thing could screw up the political gift of three Obama administration controversies at once: fellow Republicans.

Top GOP leaders are privately warning members to put a sock in it when it comes to silly calls for impeachment or over-the-top comparisons to Watergate. They want members to focus on months of fact-finding investigations — not rhetorical fury.


Why the fuss? Well…

—“People may be starting to use the I-word before too long,” Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) told a radio host, making plain impeachment was indeed the I-word in mind.

—“You could call #Benghazi Obama’s Watergate, except no one died,” Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) wrote on Twitter.

—“It harkens back to the days of Richard Nixon and maintaining a political enemies list and treating the federal government as a tool to exact the administration’s retribution,” Sen. Ted Cruz told the National Review.

—“This is far worse than Watergate,” Rep. Michele Bachmann said of the IRS mess at a tea party rally.

—“I believe that before it’s all over, this president will not fill out his full term,” former governor and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said on his own show before the IRS and AP flaps.

—A PPP poll found all of this to be mainstream Republican thinking, with 41 percent calling Benghazi the BIGGEST political scandal in HISTORY.

( Also on POLITICO: Obama attempts 'scandal reduction surgery')

“We have to be persistent but patient,” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus told us. “I think where there’s smoke, there’s fire. If we present ourselves to the American people as intelligent, we’re going to be in a great place as far as showing that this administration is not transparent, is obsessed with power and hates dissent. But you don’t call for impeachment until you have evidence.”

It is important to remember that there is no evidence any of the specific controversies directly link to President Barack Obama himself. No one knows what the various congressional probes will turn up, but until there is a direct connection to the president, the best Republicans can probably do is use the three episodes to illustrate the dangerous reach — and what they see as pervasive incompetence — of the Obama government.

Meantime, the incentives for the incendiary are strong, as the PPP polls show: It helps Republicans raise money, get on Fox and excite conservatives. It also provides an easy way for someone like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to show skeptical conservatives that he is one of them — and therefore should not be challenged in an upcoming GOP primary. This is true for most House Republicans: Redistricting has left them far more threatened by a primary challenge from the right than by a general election challenge on the left.

( Also on POLITICO: Meet the Benghazi lobby)

A top Senate Republican leadership aide said Obama’s steps this week did nothing to diminish the GOP’s blood lust over the IRS, and said the coming investigation “has the capacity to be debilitating” for the administration. “It will take months, and it will ebb and flow in terms of its national attention,” the aide said. “But the ebbs will be white hot.”

Republicans are well aware of their long history of taking their scandal crusades too far, and turning damaged political figures like Bill Clinton into popular victims. Who can forget former Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), then in the Issa role of overseeing the oversight committee, re-enacting the death of Clinton friend Vince Foster in his backyard by shooting a watermelon?

( Also on POLITICO: W.H. Benghazi documents point to CIA)

Republican leaders privately say the best and only way to avoid a public backlash is by using their congressional powers to aggressively investigate each matter — and let the facts carry the news, rather than stunts or rhetoric. “We have stuff here that’s real, so you don’t need the distraction of politics to give people an excuse to say we’re being silly,” said a House Republican leadership aide involved in the investigations. “Everyone is keenly away of the overreach risk.”

The aide said that issues cut across so many committees that most members will be involved, and the chairs plan to send the message to stick to substance. “When one committee is leading something and some members feel left out, they’ll step out there and make an accusation to get attention,” the aide said. That’s part of the reason House leadership does not plan to create a separate committee to investigate Benghazi, even though 154 Republican members — two-thirds of the conference — have co-sponsored Rep. Frank Wolf’s proposal for a select committee. A separate committee would also cost $2 million to $3 million, aides said.

In an effort to avoid embarrassment or an appearance of naked partisanship, Issa is holding back for now on the likely climax of the Benghazi investigation: an effort to call Hillary Clinton back to Capitol Hill for more testimony, after she largely skated through her January appearances.

His next move is following up on an opening provided by last week’s testimony: the rigor of the State Department’s Accountability Review Board on Benghazi, which did not include an interview with Clinton. Behind the scenes, he and his staff are trying to get more whistleblowers to testify, a move that would generate authentic news. One aide said there are plans to stretch this probe into 2014.

The gut check moment will come when Issa needs to decide on forcing Clinton to testify.

A Democratic strategist, knowledgeable about administration thinking, maintains that calling Clinton back would be seen as an “extreme and unprecedented stunt” and “quite a risky proposition” for House Republicans. “Congress had her an entire day in January, and she kicked their ass,” the strategist said. “If she performed that well a second time, they could lose the issue permanently. They are better off waiting until her numbers soften with time and as she comes back down to earth — in the meantime, beating the drum as a midterm issue that she is ducking and hiding.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi are banking on the GOP going overboard — especially with women and minorities. One top Democratic aide, getting ready for combat, emailed that Republicans are likely to come off as “a bunch of white guys hammering away.” “Wonder how they will be if Hillary or Susan Rice testifies?” the aide asked. “Republicans are fully capable of taking an issue that should have valid questions asked, and turning it into another Whitewater investigation that goes way off the cliff. They could wind up making Hillary a sympathetic figure.”

Katie Glueck contributed to this report.