GOP leader accidentally tells the truth about Benghazi committee

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/gop-leader-accidentally-tells-the-truth-about-benghazi-committee

By Steve Benen
Oct. 1, 2015

Even die-hard GOP partisans sometimes find it difficult to justify the House Republicans’ Benghazi committee. The party struggled to explain why it was necessary in the first place – the deadly 2012 attack was already examined by seven other congressional committees – and the rationale is even more elusive now that the investigation is the longest in the history of the United States.

Making matters slightly worse, the GOP-led committee has conducted itself in such a way as to raise concerns that the entire endeavor is little more than a taxpayer-funded election scheme.

Keep that in mind when reading about House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) – the likely next Speaker of the House – and his interview on Fox News last night. Roll Call reported this morning on the Republican leader’s on-air comments:

“What you’re going to see is a conservative Speaker, that takes a conservative Congress, that puts a strategy to fight and win. And let me give you one example. 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 that any of that had happened had we not fought to make that happen.”

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the ostensible point of the Select Committee on Benghazi was to examine a terrorist attack that left four Americans dead in Libya, not to create an election tool that can affect a presidential candidate’s poll numbers.

Note, McCarthy sees the committee as a legitimate accomplishment of the Republican Congress, not because it’s uncovered relevant details about an act of terrorism, but because Hillary Clinton’s “numbers are dropping.” This, in his mind, is evidence of the GOP majority using its power effectively – by using a supposedly non-partisan investigatory vehicle to embarrass a Democrat with dubious allegations.

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