"Please proceed, senator" is the new "Please proceed, governor."
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
has a point to make:
As if Democrats weren't saddled with enough problems in the 2014 midterms, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is quite certain that Benghazi will be a factor, too.
"I think Benghazi is gonna loom large in '14," Graham told Newsmax's Steve Malzberg on Wednesday.
"I think Democrats are gonna have to start making President Obama account for his leadership. Where was he that night? Did he know it was a terrorist attack? Why did he say for two weeks we think it was a protest? How could he have done that?"
Now, I didn't say it was a good point. In fact, it's a remarkably bad one, because the biggest political difference between the Benghazi story in 2014 and the Benghazi story in 2012 is that in 2014, it'll be two years older. Since
day one, Republicans have tried to capitalize on the Benghazi attack with accusations of coverup and conspiracy, but outside of the right-wing bubble, they've failed miserably.
Remember when Mitt Romney thought he'd crushed President Obama on Benghazi during the second presidential debate, only to find out seconds later that the only thing that got crushed was his credibility? That's pretty much Benghazi in a nutshell for you: Something that right-wingers have convinced themselves is the thing that will bring President Obama down but leaves everybody else scratching their heads going "Huh?"
For Benghazi to be any different in 2014 than it was in 2012, conservatives are going to need to supply some evidence supporting their tinfoil theories. Warmed over rehashes of what we already knew (for example, yesterday's Benghazi report) aren't going to cut it. Absent some sort of game-changing revelation (which we all know isn't going to happen), the best Republicans can hope for is that Benghazi boosts their base turnout. More likely, however, they'll do what Mitt Romney did in 2012: Overplay their hand.