Forget Benghazi. For the GOP, It's Back to the War on Women.

Newly-appointed chairperson of the Select Investigative Panel, Rep. Marsha
Blackburn (R-TN): "If you believe that, I've got some baby body parts to sell you."

Sheesh. You'd think that having your head handed to you on Corningware plate by Hillary Clinton would chasten Republicans into realizing that destroying your brand wasn't a viable game plan for 2016. But you'd be wrong.

I know the Benghazi fiasco came to a close -- one can only assume -- just this past Thursday, and that the announcement of the anti-Planned Parenthood committee was in the works well before Trey Gowdy and gang were thrown to the lions. So it's not surprising that the laws of motion dictate that foolhardy, self-destructive plans would move forward the very next day, as if sending forth another Titanic upon hearing the first one had sunk was a wise choice.

As with Benghazi, the Planned Parenthood allegations have been thoroughly debunked. Nonetheless, read this from the Huffington Post and weep:

The eight Republican members of the Select Investigative Panel who will probe the practices of “big abortion providers” -- which everyone understands to mean Planned Parenthood -- have spent years trying to defund the reproductive health provider and restrict women's access to abortion.

The release, earlier this year, of sting videos made by an anti-abortion group that show Planned Parenthood staff members discussing fetal tissue donations for research has led to Republican claims that Planned Parenthood profited from the donations. Federal law allows the organization to accept reimbursements to cover the processing and transfer of the tissues. Planned Parenthood has insisted that it has done nothing illegal, and numerous state and federal investigations have found no evidence of wrongdoing.

Recall that there had been seven prior investigations into the Benghazi attacks that had essentially cleared Hillary Clinton of culpability. The eighth investigation crashed and burned Thursday, causing a number of observers and pundits to conclude that contrary to destroying Hillary, they'd given her a chance to appear convincingly presidential in a long national forum rarely accorded a potential candidate for the presidency.

So here we are: We've got a credible woman candidate for president -- by some measures the only current electable candidate -- in 2016, and what do the Republicans do? Launch yet another offensive offensive in the War on Women™.

Hey, Republicans, here's an idea! Just when there's a credible woman candidate for president at a time when there are growing suspicions that your party actually has a clown car full of candidates for president, why don't you continue to alienate the very class of voters that might want to vote en masse for said woman candidate? Yeah, that's the ticket!

Doing this on top of what might be the greatest set of insults to yet another class of voters ever launched the year before a presidential election -- being Hispanics and other immigrants, including, now, Asians (smart move) -- would be, one would think, a really, really self-defeating enterprise.

At least the Republicans end up with one positive: They will not have been defeated by the Democrats. They will have defeated themselves.

Meanwhile, get some popcorn and watch the horror show that the Planned Parenthood investigation is going to be. If you're a Dem, it has a happy ending. If you're a Republican, you're screwed.

Every so often, I'm reminded of the time when I owned a restaurant and watched a family on their first visit to my establishment. They came in so excited, drank too much, got drunk, hated their beautifully prepared and cooked T-bone steaks, and left in a huff.

I had personally handled their table because I felt drawn to make sure their first visit was memorable. When they instead angrily breezed out of the place, I stood puzzled, watching them from the end of the bar as they left. My bartender, Jeff, walked up to me, polishing a glass, and stood for a moment. Then he said, "You know, some people just go out for a bad time."

I knew in a flash that he was right. Right now, because their party has been hijacked by the Tea Party, Republicans cannot seem to go out in public for anything but a bad time. Boy, are they having it, and, boy, do they deserve it.

Who you lookin' at??