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Republicans Double Down with Failed Select Committee Strategy, but Planned Parenthood Wins the Day

October 15, 2015
Blog

By Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton

Planned Parenthood took the high road and a smart turn in the road by announcing that they will continue fetal tissue donations, but will no longer accept reimbursements. They have now taken both legs out from under the Republican attack on Planned Parenthood. With the fetal tissue issue gone, Planned Parenthood has exposed the real attack—on women's health and on constitutionally protected abortion. The other leg is the Planned Parenthood select committee—which is now widely recognized as the Republican default strategy when their committees fail.

Try hard as they did, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, on which I serve, could not show any violation of law, as Chairman Jason Chaffetz had to admit. Still, the predicable reaction of House Republicans is to double down and proceed anyway with a new witch-hunting select committee. Yet another select committee is as doomed as its Benghazi forebear, which was exposed as a political vehicle by Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy.