Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is high on his party’s delusions about using their debunked Benghazi conspiracy theories to bring down Hillary Clinton, the front runner for 2016, as she is currently polling light years ahead of all the Republicans.
Graham wrote on his Facebook page Tuesday, “I think the dam is about to break on Benghazi. We’re going to find a system failure before, during, and after the attacks. We’re going to find political manipulation seven weeks before an election. We’re going to find people asleep at the switch when it comes to the State Department, including Hillary Clinton. The bond that has been broken between those who serve us in harms way and the government they serve is huge — and to me every bit as damaging as Watergate.”
Lindsey made a good point when he qualified his reference to Watergate with “and to me”, because Republicans have been falling over themselves to attribute any number of huge Republican scandals to President Obama to no avail. They’ve been naming natural storms “Obama’s Katrina” and trying to pin the wars on Obama by calling them “Obama’s wars” and for months they’ve tried to turn Benghazi into Obama’s Watergate. But when that didn’t work, and when new polls showed Hillary wiping their front-runners off of the map, they realized that they should change targets.
So now we’re getting attempts at “Hillary Clinton’s Watergate!!!”, only without the evidence, smoking guns, proof, and actual scandal. It will only be Clinton’s Watergate in right wing public relations venues. And if their past history indicates anything, Republicans will buy into their own press, never checking in with the actual public who vote, and will destroy their national chances once again as they pander to extremists.
This is yet another huge fail, on par with Republicans believing their own “unskewed polls” in 2012. Instead of changing their party to meet the current age, Republicans are just changing reality to suit them.
The comments on Lindsey’s Facebook page might inform a more reality-based Senator that this is not the best road to winning (last names redacted):
Jay ****: Where’s the outrage for the embassy attacks on Bush’s watch? Why was the last “investigation” during Clinton’s? Is it okay for people to die for a republican administration but not a democratic one?
To which Marcia ***** replied: Jay, 54 people died at our Consulates and Embassies during Bush’s term in office. Where is the outrage? Oh, that’s right…. FAKE outrage trying to bring Hillary Clinton down from the perch they think she sits on for 2016.
Hey, Lindsey, they see right through you. Maybe the tactic of trying to smear the opposition instead of actually offering a viable candidate of your own is not the best plan.
Here’s what Republicans should be very afraid of unearthing if they keep this up: Republicans were warned by their own side to stop playing games with Libya. It’s a wonder that no one reads these facts back to them during their partisan witch hunts that we are all paying for.
It didn’t go so well when desperate Republicans tried to call Benghazi Obama’s Watergate in November of 2012, after House Republicans cut the administration’s request for embassy security funding by $128 million in fiscal 2011, and $331 million in fiscal 2012:
Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY) exploded, “The stench of hypocrisy that hangs over this city today emanates from this room. I’ve listened to my colleagues talk about the President of the United States and others in the administration using [the] terms ‘deliberate’, ‘lies’, ‘unmitigated gall’, ‘malfeasance,’ which is malicious and knowing evil-doing, ‘disgust’, ‘coverups’. If you want to know who is responsible in this town, buy yourself a mirror!
The audacity to come here” when the administration requested, for worldwide security, “$440 million more than you guys wanted to provide. And the answer is that you damn didn’t provide it! You REDUCED what the administration asked for to protect these people. Ask not who the guilty party is, it’s you! It is us. It is this committee, and the things that we insist that we need have to cost money.”
If Republicans bring Benghazi up to Hillary Clinton in a 2016 debate, she can hit them hard with their party’s defunding of security in Libya for purely political reasons — namely, trying to destroy President Obama. Think 2012 Obama v Romney debate: Romney’s epic Benghazi attack fail.
Hillary Clinton can remind Republicans that in 2011, as the then Secretary of State, she warned that Republicans’ proposed cuts to her department would be “detrimental to America’s national security”. Republicans ignored her for petty political reasons and now all Republicans can do is point their fingers and whinge like the petty, irresponsible and vindictive children they are.
Clinton polled exceptionally well right after the Republicans last attempt to blame her for Benghazi, and she also destroyed Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during their hearing, and they are much smarter than the current presidential front runners on foreign policy. Republicans never learn.
Here’s hoping the Senator is just playing to his base for his own reelection purposes, and that the party isn’t really this delusional.
In either case, please proceed, Senator.
h/t Politico
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
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