Even obsessive Hillary hater, Maureen Dowd begrudgingly admits it.
Republicans are still savoring the idea of getting Hillary to raise her hand to take the oath.
“They do seem to enjoy coming after me,” Hillary told Tapper with a smile.
But it’s going to be less a showdown than a show trial. The verdict is already in. The Republicans are guilty.
It’s not that Hillary has gotten so much more trustable. It’s just that the Republicans are so much less credible.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/opinion/sunday/will-hillary-clinton-be-pilloried-by-the-benghazi-committee.html
" McCarthy’s comments gave people in the media permission to talk about the committee in a different and more realistic way, one that accorded with what they already understood to be true. Before, the story was framed by Republican allegations about Clinton, but now the committee itself has become the issue. The operative question is no longer, “What is Hillary Clinton guilty of?”, because that has been asked and answered a thousand times. Whether you think she ought to be president or not, there’s simply no evidence that she committed any misdeeds before or after the Benghazi attack. The question is now, “What the heck is going on with this committee?”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/10/19/this-week-marks-the-end-of-the-benghazi-scandal/
Even before McCarthy-a fitting name-spilled the beans on the GOP's McCarthyite tactics-Hillary was the one who wanted this public, not Gowdy. Waldman explains part of why this is:
"And what’s going to happen on Thursday? Understand that most of the time, congressional testimony makes the witness look much better than the questioners. There are exceptions here and there, but a well-prepared witness who knows the facts will usually look almost heroic when posed against a bunch of grandstanding blowhards trying in vain to trip her up. The Republicans on the committee will be trying so, so hard, but their main problem is that they just don’t have the thing they hoped they would find: evidence that Clinton committed some act of malfeasance or corruption that led to the deaths of four Americans on that night in Benghazi three years ago."
You knew things had reversed when Hillary's campaign was the one that aired the first two Benghazi ads.
"Throughout its long life, the Benghazi committee has operated in nakedly partisan fashion, but up until now they've been able to get away with it. They take some testimony behind closed doors and then out of many hours of this testimony a few sentences will be leaked to the media without any context, in an effort to cause Hillary Clinton political damage. The media largely went along for this ride, in far-too-credulous fashion. Democrats on the committee scrambled to keep up with these leaks, and demanded that all the testimony be made public. The Republicans running the committee refused to do so."
"This week, the Democrats on the committee struck back and released their ownextensive summary. This extraordinary document, filled with excerpts of testimony, is a thorough debunking of all the conspiracy theories Republicans have been trading ever since Benghazi happened. This is a mountain of evidence that shows the Republicans have been searching for a smoking gun which simply does not exist."
"Hillary Clinton was also asked to testify behind closed doors. She refused, and successfully demanded a public hearing instead. This means leaked soundbites won't be possible, because the context of any statement will also be on the record. As I said, Hillary sounded pretty confident of her ability to face the committee, even before the committee's motives were exposed by House Republicans. This exposure put a lot of pressure on Trey Gowdy, the committee's chair, who tried valiantly to insist (without convincing anyone, of course) that politics had nothing to do with his investigation."
"Oddly enough, this may pressure not just Gowdy but all the Republicans on the committee to dial it back a bit on Thursday -- making Hillary's job even easier. The Democrats on the committee will doubtlessly use their question time to pick apart the partisan nature of everything the Republicans say. Now that the media is primed for the story, a few of these might actually become the go-to soundbites out of the hearing."
"As long as Clinton doesn't lose her cool or have some other spectacular bad moment on Thursday, she's largely already won the public relations battle. She was helped enormously by the open admissions from Republicans that the committee was partisan in nature. Republicans have spent a monumental amount of time and energy (not to mention the taxpayers' money) chasing conspiracy theories about what happened in Benghazi. They've investigated it over and over again, and unearthed nothing of substance. Their continued insistence on further investigating is probably the biggest argument that the entire thing is a political witch hunt -- because if it wasn't, objective people would have stopped investigating by now. This investigation -- and this testimony, in specific -- were scheduled to do maximum damage to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. However, the ones getting politically damaged by the entire exercise now seem to be the Republicans. This Thursday, the spotlight will be on them, and not so much on Clinton. That's a pretty stunning turnaround."
"Maybe they should just be honest, and rename the investigation the "Committee To Politically Defeat Hillary Clinton." When even Republicans are admitting this is the case, why not just call it by its true name?"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-weigant/focus-will-be-on-question_b_8334366.html
Republicans are still savoring the idea of getting Hillary to raise her hand to take the oath.
“They do seem to enjoy coming after me,” Hillary told Tapper with a smile.
But it’s going to be less a showdown than a show trial. The verdict is already in. The Republicans are guilty.
It’s not that Hillary has gotten so much more trustable. It’s just that the Republicans are so much less credible.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/opinion/sunday/will-hillary-clinton-be-pilloried-by-the-benghazi-committee.html
Dowd is a Hillary hater, so she still has to hold onto the idea that HRC is 'unstustable' even though it''s not a word and the only people claiming she is untrustable are those with no credibility.
Paul Waldman also picks up on the shift on the focus of Benghazi.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/10/19/this-week-marks-the-end-of-the-benghazi-scandal/
Even before McCarthy-a fitting name-spilled the beans on the GOP's McCarthyite tactics-Hillary was the one who wanted this public, not Gowdy. Waldman explains part of why this is:
"And what’s going to happen on Thursday? Understand that most of the time, congressional testimony makes the witness look much better than the questioners. There are exceptions here and there, but a well-prepared witness who knows the facts will usually look almost heroic when posed against a bunch of grandstanding blowhards trying in vain to trip her up. The Republicans on the committee will be trying so, so hard, but their main problem is that they just don’t have the thing they hoped they would find: evidence that Clinton committed some act of malfeasance or corruption that led to the deaths of four Americans on that night in Benghazi three years ago."
You knew things had reversed when Hillary's campaign was the one that aired the first two Benghazi ads.
"Throughout its long life, the Benghazi committee has operated in nakedly partisan fashion, but up until now they've been able to get away with it. They take some testimony behind closed doors and then out of many hours of this testimony a few sentences will be leaked to the media without any context, in an effort to cause Hillary Clinton political damage. The media largely went along for this ride, in far-too-credulous fashion. Democrats on the committee scrambled to keep up with these leaks, and demanded that all the testimony be made public. The Republicans running the committee refused to do so."
"This week, the Democrats on the committee struck back and released their ownextensive summary. This extraordinary document, filled with excerpts of testimony, is a thorough debunking of all the conspiracy theories Republicans have been trading ever since Benghazi happened. This is a mountain of evidence that shows the Republicans have been searching for a smoking gun which simply does not exist."
"Hillary Clinton was also asked to testify behind closed doors. She refused, and successfully demanded a public hearing instead. This means leaked soundbites won't be possible, because the context of any statement will also be on the record. As I said, Hillary sounded pretty confident of her ability to face the committee, even before the committee's motives were exposed by House Republicans. This exposure put a lot of pressure on Trey Gowdy, the committee's chair, who tried valiantly to insist (without convincing anyone, of course) that politics had nothing to do with his investigation."
"Oddly enough, this may pressure not just Gowdy but all the Republicans on the committee to dial it back a bit on Thursday -- making Hillary's job even easier. The Democrats on the committee will doubtlessly use their question time to pick apart the partisan nature of everything the Republicans say. Now that the media is primed for the story, a few of these might actually become the go-to soundbites out of the hearing."
"As long as Clinton doesn't lose her cool or have some other spectacular bad moment on Thursday, she's largely already won the public relations battle. She was helped enormously by the open admissions from Republicans that the committee was partisan in nature. Republicans have spent a monumental amount of time and energy (not to mention the taxpayers' money) chasing conspiracy theories about what happened in Benghazi. They've investigated it over and over again, and unearthed nothing of substance. Their continued insistence on further investigating is probably the biggest argument that the entire thing is a political witch hunt -- because if it wasn't, objective people would have stopped investigating by now. This investigation -- and this testimony, in specific -- were scheduled to do maximum damage to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. However, the ones getting politically damaged by the entire exercise now seem to be the Republicans. This Thursday, the spotlight will be on them, and not so much on Clinton. That's a pretty stunning turnaround."
"Maybe they should just be honest, and rename the investigation the "Committee To Politically Defeat Hillary Clinton." When even Republicans are admitting this is the case, why not just call it by its true name?"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-weigant/focus-will-be-on-question_b_8334366.html
This week for the first time, Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the Benghazi Committee has called for its dissipation. The irony is that politically it might be in the GOP's best interest too.
My guess is that some of the highlights from this testimony will end up in more Hillary ads. Benghazi has now shifted to something that actually helps her I think. It certainly fires up the Hillary base.
Even many Bernie supporters admit that they're disgusted by this.
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