Hillary Lied About Benghazi; So What?

We've known for years that the Obama Administration misled the American people about the motivations of the attack on Benghazi. They blamed a YouTube video for sparking outrage across Libya when they knew it was a terrorist attack. We can't let a terrorist attack seven weeks before the 2012 election muddy up the narrative, can we?

After 11 hours of Hillary Clinton testifying before the House Benghazi Committee, we have confirmation of what we've known. And when I say 11 hours, I really mean about 3 hours. The other 8 hours was taken up by Congressfolk pontificating, monologuing, whining, theorizing, making mini-speechs, crafting soundbites, and wasting time by complaining about all the time being wasted.

So was the hearing worth it?

"Thanks to Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi testimony on Thursday, we now understand why the former secretary of state never wanted anyone to see her emails and why the State Department sat on documents. Turns out those emails and papers show that the Obama administration deliberately misled the nation about the deadly events in Libya on Sept. 11, 2012. 

Don’t forget how we came to this point. Mrs. Clinton complained in her testimony on Capitol Hill that past Congresses had never made the overseas deaths of U.S. officials a “partisan” issue. That’s because those past deaths had never inspired an administration to concoct a wild excuse for their occurrence, in an apparent attempt to avoid blame for a terror attack in a presidential re-election year." - Kimberly Strassel, The Wall Street Journal

And also:

"Even by today's standards of rabid partisanship, the breast-beating threat display from Democrats and members of the press alike to which voters were privy yesterday was something to behold.  The message has been clearly received: Republicans, back off from the nest in which Barack Obama’s anointed Democratic successor is incubating... 

Even if you were inclined to be extraordinarily charitable toward former Secretary Clinton and the administration in which she served, one must at least concede that new questions about what the administration knew and when it knew it have been opened up by this committee. It seems, however, that those with a passing attachment to intellectual honesty are in short supply inside the Beltway. 

The Benghazi Committee is owed a public debt if only because it has exposed the decay in Washington’s culture of wagon-circling. Pundits who forever lament America’s sense of alienation from the political class and their growing cynicism towards elected elites appear not to notice when they are exacerbating that condition. While news media and Democrats are praising Clinton’s performance, Americans are waking up to the notion that they might have been deliberately misled about the deaths of their fellow citizens in a terror attack and likely for petty political gain. There is something rotten here." - Noah Rothman, Commentary

On the Republican side, I thought Troy Gowdy and Martha Roby acquitted themselves best. Linda Sanchez and Adam Smith were probably the worst partisans on the Democratic side. When Adam Smith complained about not learning anything, Gowdy shot back with this: "I'll be happy to get a copy of my opening statement for the gentleman from Washington so he can refresh his recollection on all the things our committee found that your previous committee missed."

As for the Republicans in Congress as a whole, they are re-learning the lesson that the GOP from the 1990's learned: you cannot bring a Clinton down with a scandal.  Most of the media reports are praising her performance. And that's what politics is: performance. Democratic donors are thrilled to jump aboard the H-Train now.

Benghazi as an issue in 2016 is dead. Her email server is not. But really, for a year where the majority of Americans want an outsider, when they view DC as corrupt, is Hillary Clinton not the ultimate corrupt insider?  Between her and Trump, this is so far the most bizarro election ever.