GOP’s Benghazi meter does not read victory

By James Carville - 09/09/14 07:39 PM EDT, The Hill

Just a tiny bit over a year ago I wrote a column for this publication indicating that the Republicans had not been right about a single thing so far this century. Sports gamblers have a name for when you don’t win a single bet over a weekend — it’s called the “0fer” — and a year later, we can add several more Republican predictions that continue the Grand Old Party’s streak of being 100 percent wrong.

Much has been made in the last year about the threats of ObamaCare, ranging from massive private and public sector layoffs to exploding premiums, and none of it has come true. Well, the House Republicans refuse to quit or accept reality. And while football season has just started, the right wing’s big bet — the Benghazi Bowl — is coming to an end. Since 2012 they’ve been playing political football with the national tragedy that killed four Americans. And they’re about to lose this big bet.

You see, the Republicans assembled a team of all-stars. They wanted to have their best players all together, for one ball game, to defeat Team Hillary Clinton. From Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul to California Rep. Darrell Issa to South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy, they’ve had a strong team. But their problem all along hasn’t been the team, it’s been the goal of the game they’re playing — to derail President Obama, his administration and especially Clinton.

Two years later, let’s take a look at the box score on Benghazi:

• nine congressional committees;
• 13 public hearings;
• dozens of interviews;
• 50 senior level staff briefings;
• more than 25,000 pages of documents;
• three independent/bipartisan reports (with one more forthcoming);
• zero evidence of political wrongdoing.

(More here.)