GOP Leader Takes Pride In Benghazi Committee Hurting Hillary’s Poll Numbers

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Calif. smiles after finishing a speech about foreign policy, Monday, Sept. 28, 2015, during the John Hay Initiative, at a hotel in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
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House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) suggested late Tuesday that the House investigation into the Benghazi attacks had successfully damaged Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

The aspiring House speaker cited the House Select Committee on Benghazi as an example of how he would strategically wield a conservative majority in Congress if he got the job while presenting his conservative bona fides in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity.

“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?” McCarthy said. “But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable [sic]. But no one would have known any of that had happened had we not fought and made that happen.”

“I agree,” Hannity said. “That’s something good I give you credit for that.”

A top Democrat on the Benghazi committee, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), wrote a New York Times op-ed earlier this month calling for the committee’s dissolution on the grounds that it had abandoned its original purpose and become “little more than a partisan tool to influence the presidential race.”

A spokesman for Clinton quickly pounced on McCarthy’s comments:

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Notable Replies

  1. Not really. The fact that Secretary Clinton is not a very adept campaigner has hurt her campaign.

  2. Avatar for anniew anniew says:

    This does make him seem not quite ready for prime time.

  3. Doesn’t change the fact that the speaker of the house in-waiting has as much as admitted the GOP are burning tax dollars to conduct a partisan political witch hunt, the sole purpose of which is not to investigate and learn the truth about anything, but to damage the political prospects of an adversary.

  4. HRC is in this campaign for the long term so has not yet unleashed her campaign chops, and when she does, she will kill. She will stay on message, she will be gaffe free in debates (first one’s in two weeks), has a mind like an encyclopedia and is comfortable with confrontation and competition as we have witnessed at that mockery of a Benghazi hearing. This guy’s a dim bulb with nothing on his political record to speak of. He got lucky early on and won a lottery, opened a store, nothing on the political stage.

  5. Secretary Clinton has never been a particularly adept campaigner. She’s incredibly brilliant, yes, but she has never been able to really humanize herself to the voters. This includes the last several campaigns she has run.

    @CPL593H

    I only wish people who support the Republicans understood that. They won’t.

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