Like so many things in Washington now, the people who support Ms Clinton already knew the Benghazi hearings were a joke and a smear job.
And the people who hate Ms Clinton also know it was a smear job, but don’t care and want to beat her at any cost. They’re probably more just mildly annoyed (as opposed to outraged) that McCarthy took away their veneer of plausible deniability.
I really, really doubt there are that many people out there who though those hearings were legitimately about finding out “the truth”.
Maybe best to just ignore it and let them get their jollies. A reasoning person, of that vanishing breed that we can convince with facts and evidence, they either have already reviewed the facts or will. Either way, they are no problem to Hillary. The people who will not be budged by facts and evidence have already decided. The, ah, “investigation” can go on for a week, month or another year, won’t matter.
Some of them might review the facts and evidence and change their mind, decide there isn’t anything there worth bothering about. Maybe they both live in the same district.
Yes, but that’s a different debate. If you’re already in the mindset of “Hillary Clinton = mob boss”, there’s nothing at all remarkable about the statement. Even looking at it from the other side, it’s really not all that outrageous. Politicians have political motives. Meh.
Not if your a Republican. Again, those who correctly believe the “scandal” was created out of whole cloth to discredit Clinton, will see his words as admitting that this is the case. Those who think the Bengazi attack was personally orchestrated by Clinton will view him as saying that the investigations were worth while because they brought to light the scheming of Clinton before the American people and prevented our great nation from falling into her clutches.
Yeah, but if you thought there was something behind the Benghazi “scandal,” you’d see that as a perfect parallel. And the people who think there’s something behind the Benghazi scandal are the people who put McCarthy into office in the first place, so they’re not likely to be put off by this “gaffe.”
I think McCarthy probably will be the next speaker, but I disagree that he gave Clinton a gift. This kind of thing definitely hurts Republicans, but it doesn’t help Clinton. The public strongly disapproves of her handling of Benghazi. The fact that Republicans were trying to use that for political gain reflects badly on Republicans, but doesn’t make her look any better.
“Strongly disapproves” (which is how you described public opinion in your earlier post) is a subset of “disapproves” (which is what the poll shows).
For the record: yes, I’m a liberal. However, HRC makes me uncomfortable, for a variety of reasons, and I think she’s a serious flawed candidate. Despite this, I do believe that the Benghazi investigation has been blown into a partisan witch hunt by the Republicans.
Thanks to McCarthy, we now know that the Republicans do too. I vaguely recall a similar slip-up from Darrell Issa when he chaired the committee but I can’t find it now.