The Benghazi Committee has run its course. In Hillary Clinton’s hearing last Thursday, the select committee — tasked with investigating the events surrounding the attack of a Libyan diplomatic compound in 2012 — came off as little more than a political witch hunt. As a writer for The New Yorker put it, the interrogations seemed to “[manifest] all of Washington’s pathologies — dysfunction, partisan squabbling, insularity.” This is bad, considering the committee’s so-called ‘purpose’ is to get to the bottom of some really serious missteps.
Although hindsight is always 20/20, the events leading up to the Benghazi attacks were under scrutiny, and rightfully so. Clinton, as Secretary of State and architect of the U.S.-Libyan intervention, came under fire for decisions she was involved in which failed to adequately reinforce the United States consulate in Libya. The attack caused the death of four Americans and has been a black spot on Clinton’s record since.
This last sentence is mirrored one-for-one by the continued existence of the Benghazi Committee. Since 2012, Republicans have had an eye out for Clinton, hoping to orchestrate the ‘Gotcha!’ moment that would derail her Democratic campaign. As poll numbers give Clinton a marginal lead over Bernie Sanders, and Republican Presidential Candidates are a dime-a-dozen — with frontrunners like Ben Carson and Donald Trump — the GOP has scrambled to mount a smear campaign strong enough to bolster naysayers against Clinton and the Democrats.
Though “scrambled” might be too hyperbolic a word, it portrays the sense of urgency Republican lawmakers must be feeling when they look to the 2016 elections. It wasn’t surprising then, when House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, went on television last month and announced, somewhat triumphantly, that the committee was bringing down Clinton’s poll numbers. Since then, the feeling pervades that the real intention of the committee has been (at least in recent months) to harm Clinton’s campaign.
However, rather than hurt Clinton, I think the committee (along with some repartee between Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Maryland) and Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-South Carolina)) is only serving to hurt the Republican party’s image. Cummings, who sits on the committee and is the ranking member, has voiced his frustration multiple times about the investigation’s pace and ineffectiveness. The committee, according to a press release, is “now one of the longest and least active congressional investigations in history.” Members have used over $4.5 million in taxpayer money —more than investigations on Watergate, Pearl Harbor and Hurricane Katrina response combined — to fund the investigation, and, I kid you not, have started a wine club nicknamed “Wine Wednesdays,” in which members “[drink] from glasses imprinted with the words ‘Glacial Pace,’ a dig at Representative Elijah E. Cummings,” according to The New York Times.
Not only are members of the committee NOT penitent about the arbitrariness of the committee, they’ve made a joke out of the attempt to keep a years-long scandal on hand for whenever Clinton gets too high in the polls.
I’ll leave you with a few words from Cummings (my new personal hero), if only to give you a greater picture of this pathological action. He said, in front of his fellow committee members and a bemused Hillary Clinton, “It is time now, for the Republicans to end this taxpayer-funded fishing expedition.” Amen.