Rep. Alan Grayson: I'll be Republican Benghazi panel's 'worst nightmare'

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) said in an interview Friday that he is ready and willing to serve on the House Republican committee slated to investigate the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

According to Huffington Post, Grayson made the announcement during an interview with Ari Rabin-Havt on XM radio.

Grayson said that he notified House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) that he is interested in serving on the committee.

"I've said, if she decides to have Democratic members participate, I'd like to be one of them," Grayson said.

The House voted last week along party lines to launch a select committee to investigate the Benghazi attack. Democrats requested equal representation on the panel, but Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) decided that seven Republicans and five Democrats would make up the panel, which is headed by Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy (SC).

Pelosi is still trying to decide whether Democrats will participate in the hearing. Some progressive, like Rabin-Havt, argue that for Democrats to sit out of the investigation would be a "colossal error."

In The American Prospect, Rabin-Havt wrote, "Even with limited power, ceding the committee room to Republicans -- not to mention the televised hearings -- will only allow them to parade their Benghazi myths unimpeded by relevant facts framed in questions from the minority."

Credo Mobile has launched a petition asking Pelosi to name Grayson as the sole Democratic member of the committee. So far, 22,000 people have signed on to the effort.

On Friday, Grayson said Republicans are exploiting the Benghazi attack to distract from the fact that they have no policy initiatives of their own.

"They still think that there's some political gain to be gotten here because they don't want to talk about unemployment, they have no answers," he said to Rabin-Havt. "They don't want to talk about health care, they have no answers. They don't want to talk about education, or housing, or benefits, or pensions, or anything that is real in the lives of the American people. They have no answers. So instead, what they do is they try to embarrass the administration over and over again. Instead what they do is embarrass themselves."

In appearance on Rev. Al Sharpton's MSNBC show on Friday night, Grayson said, "I would be their worst, worst nightmare. I'd be their worst and last nightmare."