Benghazi Isn't Watergate It's Whitewater

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/17438-benghazi-isnt-watergate-its-whitewater

The House's Inspector Javert, Congressman Darrell Issa, held a hearing on the Benghazi attack yesterday at which a State Department official, Gregory Hicks, charged the administration with incompetence and worse. Mike Huckabee said that Obama will be impeached for Benghazi. Others suggest it'll badly damage Hillary Clinton's presidential prospects. Is anybody, Fox News included, going to be talking about this story six months from now?

It's not entirely clear that anyone is talking about it even now once you get beyond the Beltway and the GOP's Fox News base. Even Hicks's emotional testimony yesterday was overshadowed on television by a different kind of horror story emerging from Cleveland. Why are the Republicans getting so little traction with this story? After all, they have been pounding it for eight months. They believed that Benghazi was figuratively as well as literally the 9/11 of 2012, and that its fallout would usher Romney into the presidency. In fact, it barely registered as a concern in any polls. Now they believe (in Lindsey Graham's characteristically understated judgment) that Benghazi is "every bit as damaging as Watergate," a gateway both to the president's impeachment and to a GOP victory over Hillary in 2016. Yet no one else does. There are several reasons: Clinton has taken responsibility for the systemic failures that occurred on her watch; Republicans in Congress have not been able to deflect their own share of the blame, the budget cutbacks that shortchanged embassy and consulate security; Susan Rice's endlessly parsed talking points notwithstanding, no one to the left of Sean Hannity seriously believes that the Obama White House was trying to cover up a terrorist attack. But the main explanation for Benghazi's inability to catch fire with the public has to do with the American intelligence failure that led to the original 9/11 in which 3,000, not four, Americans were killed: Bush and Cheney's inability to heed such warning signs as the President's Daily Brief of August 6, 2001, "Bin Laden determined to strike in US."

[madokie]

1. Spot on

Its like a gateway drug to the obama haters and the GOP

[liberal N proud]

2. If they could, the republicans would roll out Monica Lewinsky again

But I don't think that would even work in the court of public opinion and that is all this is about. Public Opinion of Obama and ultimately Hillary.

They want to do whatever they can to minimize even the chance that Hillary would run in 2012. They fear her candidacy that much!

[NewJeffCT]

7. I was going to say it's Whitewater

without the blowjob...

[unblock]

3. plus, not calling it "terrorism" is a "cover-up"? such a ludicrous basis for a scandal!

never mind that he did call it an "act of terror".

[rightsideout]

6. Yea let's ask Issa

Is the "act of stealing a car" the same as "stealing a car?"

Or is the "act of arson" the same as "arson?"

[MannyGoldstein]

4. Not even Whitewater

More like the murder of Vince Foster.

[unblock]

9. it's even less than the "murder" of vince foster. at least that accusation was something criminal.

here they're accusing the Obama administration of, at worst, making cynical political statements or omissions, or perhaps bad policy decisions. nothing criminal at all.

[JHB]

5. I've been tempted to make satirical posts linking Vice Foster to Libyans...

...but have thought better of it. It's all too likely it'd be sucked up whole and become part of their circus.

It's not like it takes much.

[Berlum]

8. "Smirk" - Tricky Dick (R - Deferment Glutton)