Washington is a very silly place, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) takes over the House Oversight Committee edition:
One of the Utah Republican’s first acts since taking over the Oversight gavel: Removing portraits of Issa and other past chairmen from the walls of the Oversight hearing room, committee sources told The Hill.
Because, ostensibly, he doesn't like the pictures and would rather replace them with pictures of "everyday America." But this will not do. It's all clearly a plot to insult past committee chair Darrell Issa personally.
"Only someone with a massive inferiority complex would go to the extreme and somewhat unprecedented step of having every former chairman's portrait removed — especially when the obvious intent is to avoid having Chairman Issa's portrait hanging over his shoulder for the next few years,” said one former Oversight staffer.
“It's both childish and extremely disrespectful."
Now, I'm all for insulting past committee chair Darrell Issa personally. I think it should be done more often. Chaffetz's team, however, insists that it isn't meant as a slight. As if anyone remotely associated with Darrell Issa is going to believe that: Removing someone's picture from the wall is the worst thing that you can possibly do to a fellow politician—and Issa's picture had only been on that wall for two months. They take these things VERY SERIOUSLY.
“In the world of ‘This Town,’ I've heard and seen a lot but this is the worst. Members of Congress don't even pull stunts like this to their biggest adversaries on the other side of the aisle let alone a friend and colleague,” said a second former Oversight staffer. “It's not just former Chairman Issa he's disrespecting, but former Chairmen Towns, Davis and Conyers too.
On the specific question of whether or not past committee chairmen should get their portraits hung on the committee room walls, I Do Not Care. It seems pointless and self-aggrandizing, but that has been the very definition of the House Oversight Committee during the Obama years so we might as well dedicate the walls themselves to the premise.
What is deeply funny, however, is that anyone involved thought they could remove a picture of Darrell Issa and numerous other past chairmen from the walls without the supporters of Darrell Issa quickly railing against the act as a conspiracy against Darrell Issa. This is Darrell Issa we're talking about, after all. I'm only surprised he hasn't appeared on Fox News to explain how the Great Portrait Scandal is intimately tied to Benghazi.
