So now we know: One of the principal reasons Republicans spent so much public money investigating the tragic Benghazi episode was to bring down Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers. Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the likely successor to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), told Fox News’s Sean Hannity explicitly on Tuesday night that the Clinton investigation was part of a “strategy to fight and win.”…. He explained: “Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable. But no one would have known any of that had happened, had we not fought.”…. McCarthy’s admission once again ratified the writer Michael Kinsley’s long-ago but still brilliant observation that a gaffe occurs “when a politician tells the truth — some obvious truth he isn’t supposed to say.”
So there you have it- not that the news should come as a surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention. The primary aim of the seemingly endless House Benghazi hearings wasn’t to get to the truth of what happened (that horse has already been beaten to death- repeatedly). It was to inflict maximum damage on and political embarrassment to Hillary Clinton. Truth be told- which is what McCarthy just did- it was about taking down Hillary Clinton. Quell surprise, eh??
No doubt Republicans will attempt to clean up the damage done by McCarthy’s gaffe and claim that any embarrassment to Clinton was a side effect of a necessary investigation. After a two-year investigation by the House Intelligence Committee cleared the CIA and military of wrongdoing, Republicans shifted the blame to Clinton, who was Secretary of State at the time…because SOMEBODY had to be held responsible, right??
The worst part of McCarthy’s uncharacteristic honesty, at least from a governance standpoint, is the vast amount of taxpayer dollars wasted on what in the end could only be described as a Republican witch hunt.
Taxpayers might be interested in learning whether their hard-earned money — sorry, I could not resist invoking that favorite GOP cliche — was going out the door primarily to affect the chances of one particular candidate for president. How much? Rob Garver of the Fiscal Times has estimated that the select committee “will likely spend some $6 million by next year.”
That figure is probably on the low end when you consider the myriad lengthy investigations conducted in an effort to crucify Clinton get at the truth of what happened in Benghazi, which, as it turns out, wasn’t too terribly difficult to divine. Given the half-dozen or so investigations into the tragedy that was Benghazi (the fact that four brave Americans lost their lives, including the American Ambassador, seems almost beside the point), it would be difficult to imagine what ISN’T known about events and their timeline.
McCarthy’s candor has robbed the committee of its already specious claims to credibility. And he’s handed Clinton a powerful weapon to use against her critics. The Clintons’ political history is defined in part by the self-destructive behavior of Republicans during the 1990s, who turned the congressional oversight process into a nakedly political enterprise to destroy Bill and Hillary. With the likely next Speaker of the House boasting about the Benghazi committee’s political agenda and holding it up as an example of how he’d run things in his chamber, Hillary can say it’s déjà vu all over again, and you’d be hard-pressed to disagree with her.
At this point, it seems clear that discerning the “truth” about events in Benghazi is not (and never was) about accountability. From the beginning, it was yet another Republican ploy to use tax dollars to inflict political and, if possible, personal damage upon their political enemies…and Lord knows the Clintons have always been #1 on the GOP enemies list.
House Republicans have repudiated, and will continue to disown, McCarthy’s remarks, but the fact is that the gaffe was really nothing of the sort. It was a window into the motives driving Republicans, particularly those in the House, whose actions are less about governance than about influening the 2016 election in their drive to consolidate power on Capitol Hill.
Terrible things are revealed when Republicans speak the truth…which is exactly what they don’t do it very often.
