GOP Rep. Admits Benghazi Comm. Is Just To Smear Hillary

(This caricature of Rep. Kevin McCarthy is by DonkeyHotey.)

The House Committee supposedly investigating the tragedy at Benghazi has droned on for over 72 months now (longer than any other committee hearing in congressional history), even though it was long ago established that there was no wrongdoing by our government. Why does it go on? Well, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (who is likely to be the next Speaker of the House) inadvertently told the truth -- that it is nothing more than a GOP effort to smear the good name of Hillary Clinton. Evidently he forgot the first rule of Republicanism -- never admit any of the lies being told.

Here is how McCarthy's slip of the tongue is reported by Politico:

After months of being dogged by the controversy surrounding her private email account, the 2016 Democratic contender and her supporters are taking the offensive against her congressional nemesis: the House Select Committee on Benghazi.

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They’re seizing on comments from Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in which he boasted on national television that the panel’s work has hurt Hillary Clinton in the polls — a statement her supporters say vindicates their view that the panel is a politically motivated effort to damage her campaign.

Already, Republicans are distancing themselves from McCarthy’s remarks, even as he’s leading the race to be the next speaker of the House, and defending the panel they formed to investigate the 2012 attack on the Libya consulate. Democrats, on the other hand, have demanded that the panel be dissolved, with some Clinton allies even calling for McCarthy to abandon his bid to become speaker. . . .

On Tuesday, McCarthy bragged to Fox News’ Sean Hannity that “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.”

The comments undermined House Benghazi Chairman Trey Gowdy’s (R-S.C.) efforts to keep his panel’s work focused on the Benghazi attacks and stay above the political fray.

But on Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) called for the disbandment of the panel, while David Brock’s Correct the Record group pounded McCarthy, demanding he withdraw his bid for speaker.

“According to the odds-on-favorite, future speaker of the House, the Benghazi special committee was put together to hurt Hillary Clinton politically,” Reid said. “This is evidence of what Democrats have said all along. … Senate Democratic Leadership sent a letter to Speaker Boehner asking that the Benghazi Select Committee be disbanded. It’s the right thing to do.”. . .

At the crux of the debate is whether Republicans created the committee specifically to hurt Clinton or to seriously investigate the deaths of four Americans at the Benghazi diplomatic compound on Sept. 11, 2012.

Democrats, including Benghazi ranking member Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), call the entire committee a waste of taxpayer funds and "the longest and least productive investigation in congressional history." They note that several other committees have already probed the attacks and turned up nothing, and accuse the right of increasingly focusing on Clinton herself. . . .

“[B]y admitting — in fact sir by bragging — that the [committee] is little more than a partisan cudgel intended to damage Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, you have pulled back the curtain on your own party’s abuse of power and misuse of taxpayer funds to advance a nakedly political goal,” Brock, one of Clinton’s most vocal backers, wrote to McCarthy, asking him to withdraw from the speaker's race. “It’s abundantly clear that you intend to run your office like an annex of the [RNC]. … Frankly, that is evidence enough that you are unfit to lead.”

There's no indication that McCarthy's comments would hurt his leadership campaign. Indeed, Cummings said Thursday he is "not naïve in thinking Republicans will cease their political attacks on Secretary Clinton” and stop their probe altogether.

But that doesn't mean they won't whip out the new ammo McCarthy served them. In an interview with the Rev. Al Sharpton that is set to air on MSNBC this week, Clinton called the quote “deeply distressing.”

“When I hear a statement like that, which demonstrates unequivocally that this was always meant to be a partisan political exercise,” Clinton said, “I feel like it does a grave disservice and dishonors not just the memory of the four that we lost, but of everybody who has served our country.”