- Sometimes reading the news can induce a distinct sensation of déjà vu. Why, for example, is Benghazi suddenly in the headlines–again? This particular trip down memory lane comes courtesy of a batch of freshly-released e-mails. The revelation? A White House aide gave advice to Susan Rice, then the U.N. ambassador, about how to present the unfolding tragedy on national television.
- The magnitude of these revelations depends, invariably, upon your preferred source of news and outrage. Sean Hannity, Lindsay Graham, and Darrell Issa all say the emails are a “smoking gun.”
- The main conservative talking point? The White House put “politics ahead of truth.”
- For Republicans, the e-mails give new credence to their much-beloved theory that the fallout from the September 11, 2012, attack in Benghazi, Libya, was evidence of a Watergate-esque cover-up. Issa said the failure to turn over the e-mails was “in violation of any reasonable transparency or historic precedent at least since Richard Milhous Nixon.”
- Lindsay Graham also didn’t hold back. The Obama administration, according to him, is full of “scumbags” who “lied” about the attacks in Benghazi.
- So how bad is this, really? Dave Weigel admits that “it really does look like the administration chose not to send every single e-mail from the Night of the Talking Point, and that this one looked a bit worse than what was sent.” But, he adds, the new batch of e-mails don’t tell us anything new.
- Our own Paul Waldman says Republicans are clinging for dear life to the Benghazi scandal, not because they think there was any real wrongdoing, but because it’s all they’ve got.
- They make keep the scandal alive simply because it motivates their base. Over the past month, there have been over 200,000 tweets about Benghazi.
- But one former White House official said it best: “Dude, that was like two years ago.”
