Wednesday, January 23, 2013

The GOP's attempt to skewer Hillary Clinton backfired today

Listening to both the Senate and House Committee hearings in which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appeared today was probably the best boost to a political future she could have gotten. She delivered 7 hours of a widely media covered buffo performance. .If the GOP had hoped to skewer her potential candidacy, it backfired.

  The hearings showcased her good health, her steely resolve, her knowledge, her intelligence, her self control, and her humanity.  They gave her an opportunity to give a memorable farewell address in her last days as Secretary of State.

Those who had hoped they could pin a Watergate type scandal on her asked every hostile question dreamed up by right wing talk show hosts they could remember and they still  failed to make a connection with some supposed cover up. . Some even tried to bully her with questioning that attempted to drown out her answers. She aced them; she kept control of them by matching their anger with corresponding firmness  and giving herself the dominance of the floor  to present her views. She gave them back better  than what they  tried to give her.

 Those GOP Senators and especially House members  obviously were not making an honest attempt  to fact find in order to provide advice and resources to  avoid similar Ben Ghazi  incidents in the future.  They hardly were not subtle in their attempt to damage her as much they could before she ever threw her hat in the ring for President.  In their line of questioning, they only showed their partisan  hostility and   limited knowledge..  Time and again, she answered the questions by referring them to the recently completed independent review ,both the classified and public versions,  which obviously so many of the GOP  representatives and Senators had not appeared to have read.

That the GOP hopes to turn the Ben Ghazi incident into the next Watergate scandal, they have a steep hill to climb. They tried to pin the Ben Ghazi tragedy on the President during the presidential campaign, and it hardly made a ripple. Foreign affairs rarely bump up to the head of the concern of voters, and to compare  Ben Ghazi to 9/11, as one over the top Representative did, is only GOP wishful thinking that Ben Ghazi would assume that importance in 2016. If Clinton is the candidate, they are in for even stronger headwinds.

The lack of funding for the State Department missions and security was one of the most concrete revelations to come out of the hearings.  Clinton time and again made that point.  The most ironic realizations  were that State Department funding was on the sequester cutting board and that an attempt to include funding was attached to the Hurricane Sandy funding approved by Congress in December, but was removed.  Guess it was one of those pork barrel amendments so despised by the GOP fiscal hardliners. It will be one of those details to watch in the upcoming March madness of fiscal cliff 2.  We will then see who puts their vote for money where their mouths are.









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