I know it doesn't really matter that much in the grand scheme of things, but I came across a stunningly stupid article this afternoon from our favorite purveyors of Beltway Conventional Wisdom, Chris Cilizza's blog, The Fix.
So the premise of the article is that Republicans are gaining politically from Libya. The crucial evidence of this is that one CNN poll showed that 54% of people disapprove of Obama's handling of Libya, and 40% of people think there was a cover-up.
First of all, is it really that surprising that a bare majority disapprove of Obama's handling of Libya? Fox has made this into a huge scandal, talking about it ad nauseum for three months. Most people really have no idea what happened, or whether there is an actual scandal here. They just generally pick up the notion that Obama did something bad.
Second, there's a pretty good way to determine if this story would pay political dividends for Republicans. It's called a national election. It happened three weeks ago. Obama won convincingly. There is nothing that has come out since then that has changed this story.
Third, what sort of "dividends" is The Fix referring to here? It's certainly not electoral dividends. Embarrassing Obama? Is that a real dividend right after his reelection, considering he's never running for office again? Did it get them leverage in fiscal cliff talks? Did it make them seem a little less crazy? No.
Something really bad happened in Libya, and there are legitimate concerns about our security and intelligence there. But the GOP has turned this into "ZOMG Obama didn't say teh terrorizms!" I still haven't figured out what the scandal is. This is just a thing that Republicans have decided needs to be a major scandal, and without any evidence, the Fix is letting us know that it is working!!