http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/us_politics/2015/10/condemning_the_house_committee_won_t_help_clinton_erase_benghaziDAMAGE CONTROL: Hillary Clinton speaks in New Hampshire yesterday.
Tuesday, October 6, 2015
Bob McGovern, Chris Villani
Hillary Clinton’s bitter rebuke of a Republican-led House committee probing the deadly Benghazi attacks may play well with Democratic diehards and sway her wavering supporters, but it won’t put the story to rest during the 2016 presidential campaign, according to strategists.
“Democrats are fed up with the discussion about Benghazi. If she’s not going to put up a firewall, Democrats will continue to question whether something is there,” said Scott Ferson, a Democratic operative. “I think she’s speaking to Democrats. Bernie Sanders is legitimate, and she needs to speak to Democrats, first.”
Sanders, the populist Vermont senator, has been gaining ground in national polls and still holds a comfortable lead in New Hampshire.
“This is not inevitable — her nomination — it’s likely, but not inevitable,” Ferson said. “She has to nail down Democrats first, and there are nagging issues and she has to make Democrats feel more comfortable about those.”
But Steve Duprey, a Republican strategist, said, “Notwithstanding her attempt to try to end the debate by blaming right-wing groups, I think most Americans want to know what happened.
“She can’t blame it on a ‘vast right-wing conspiracy,’ ” Duprey said, referring to Clinton’s notorious theory for why former President Bill Clinton was dogged by GOP investigations during his White House tenure. “It’s a legitimate topic for Congress and a legitimate topic during the primaries.”
A House committee is investigating Clinton’s role as secretary of state in security lapses that preceded the Sept. 11, 2012, attack that left four Americans dead, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya; the failure to send help as Americans fought and died over an eight-hour period; and the subsequent false cover story that it was rioting over an anti-Islamic movie and not a planned, heavily armed terrorist attack.
Clinton — who spent yesterday in New Hampshire taking shots at Donald Trump and Jeb Bush — called the committee “partisan” during an interview on NBC’s “Today” show. She also said if she were president, she would have “done everything” in her power to shut down the investigation.
“Look at the situation they chose to exploit, to go after me for political reasons: the death of four Americans in Benghazi,” Clinton said.
“This committee was set up, as they have admitted, for the purpose of making a partisan, political issue out of the deaths of four Americans,” she said, referencing House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s comments last week suggesting the Benghazi oversight committee had succeeded in tarnishing her.
