(Mike Luckovich via GoComics.com)
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Dave Weigel on “Why Mitt Romney Was Never Going to Win the 2012 Election Over Benghazi“:
…[W]hy are Republicans convinced that this would have altered the election? Four Americans died in the attack in Benghazi. For the first time since the Carter administration, a diplomat was among the fallen. That was unspinnable. That did a certain amount of damage to the Obama campaign, like it should have. Where Hannity et al lose people is on the “cover-up”—why would the phrasing of talking points have ended the outrage? Why, because the administration was telling voters that the death of Osama bin Laden effectively ended the War on Terror, and that there was nothing new to fear, so we could go on not talking about “Islamism” and be perfectly safe.
This was never going to work. We learned why, not during the election, but during the weeks around the George W. Bush Presidential Center dedication. Bush, you’ll remember, was president during the deadliest terrorist attack ever on American soil. Yet Bush’s defenders credited him with Keeping America Safe. How? As Jennifer Rubin put it (though you could quote one of dozens of pundits), “there was no successful attack on the homeland after 9/11” while Bush was at the wheel.
This is mockable (Charlie Pierce calls it “the great mulligan”) but astute. Bush got re-elected on this theory. Americans are fretful about terrorism only to the extent that it might kill them in America. The Bush-era response to terrorism led to two fitfully successful land wars in central Asia, with thousands of military deaths; more relevantly, when we’re talking Benghazi, the Bush years saw 64 attacks of varying scale on American diplomats and embassies. None of them hurt his re-election. A terrorist attack of the same scale in, say, Indianapolis would have. Not overseas.
One of the men who died at Benghazi grew up in the greater Boston area; his life and death were given quite a bit of attention in the local media. But it was very much the same sort of coverage given to local men and women who died while serving in the military, in Iraq or Afghanistan or elsewhere — a terrible event, one for which the perpetrators should be sought out and punished, but in no way unimaginable or even unpredictable. He had been a warrior; he died ‘fighting for America’, as will happen in wars.
Republicans have spent the last thirty years, at least (it was very much received wisdom by the time Reagan was elected) telling Americans that the world is a terrible place, full of random horrors and violent strangers, and that nothing from Outside could be considered trustworthy. As a result, Joe Average (Non) Voter is more than happy to accept that it’s better to visit Disneyworld or Las Vegas — or, for a truly exotic experience, maybe a nice Carnival cruise — than to risk stepping outside the Real American bubble, where you can’t trust the water or the natives. Now Darrel Issa and Sean Hannity would like JA(N)V to be outraged, shocked that four brave /misguided Americans went out into the World of Hurt and got eaten by dragons. Not an easy sell.
Linda Featheringill
They really do hate Hillary, don’t they?
I’ve decided it’s not because she is a Democrat or that she’s female. They hate her personally. Interesting.
chrome agnomen (temporary kiwi)
while seldom commenting, i read every post here. it gets harder and harder to keep on, though, in the knowledge that while i want to be informed of the shenanigans on the right, none of that knowledge makes a damn bit of difference in any argument with individuals i know that lean right. even the people i know of that persuasion who i believe, or believed, to have some reasoning capacity, have lost the will, the desire, the courage, to argue their positions. this has to be troubling to them, but obviously not so troubling as to result in examination of those positions.
i ran into a similar problem when i lived in wyoming for several years. there are a lot of ‘old-time’ conservatives out there, who just cannot, or will not accept that their party has moved far away from them. they have been ‘punching hippies’ for so long that they don’t know how to do anything else. its purely reflexive at this point. that’s a tough thing to try and overcome. i had people that i had worked for actually move away from me in the bar when they discovered that i had ‘liberal ideas’, rather than argue their case.
i’ll still read every post, however, as i have for many years now. this is one of the best ones out there. just hard being so frustrated all the time, with one party refusing to act with any kind of faith whatsoever.
/end of lament
chrome agnomen (temporary kiwi)
@Linda Featheringill:
hillary, in some special way known only to wingnuttia, represents the quintessential hippie that they all line up to punch. doesn’t have to make any sense; it just is. strong woman=something to be feared and put down.
NotMax
Suggesting that Iraq is a part of Central Asia is quite the stretch.
Debbie(aussie)
What is it with the ‘fitfully successful land wars’? I would have thought abject failures would be far more accurate.
It certainly does seem to be a weird thing for the repugs to be focusing on. At least from down here, anyway.
NotMax
Open Thread?
File under “There’s gotta be a better way.”
Joseph Nobles
You know, there is this little factoid: all the Benghazi “cover up” bullshit was out there at least a month before the election, and Barack Obama still rode Mitt Romney hard and put him away wet on Election Day.
So what the hell, GOP?
eric nny
@NotMax:
NotMax,
Day 2 of Chantix (again). Do keep us posted on Etta Mae’s progress. That just may be my next attempt.
BillinGlendaleCA
@NotMax: I guess that I’m not an expert on this, since I smoke. I’ve heard there are products such as Nicorette or Chantix that might be a better solution.
JPL
Wow! Katie’s home or at least she was yesterday. The pictures tell a story. (Jeffrey’s link)
Bill E Pilgrim
Sadly, “it’s a frequency only right wingers can hear” includes at least certain people at the EvenTheLiberal New York Times who’ve got those frequencies tuned in and ready to repeat whatever they pick up.
Today’s example from the NYT claims that the White House is “scrambling” and “on the defensive” from shocking revelations, citing the authoritative sources for these revelations as “the Weekly Standard” and “ABC News”.
Yes, if there were ever unimpeachable sources, as it were, it would be those two.
Of course the New York Times has never considered this seriously the idea that Bush invading Iraq was a “scandal” worthy of impeachment, which is a mystery since I can’t imagine what motivation they’d have not to.
Kay
I actually think they’re “behind” voters on this, political media. Voters are ahead of them.
Terrorism doesn’t have the same political juice it had for conservatives and Republicans. They beat it to death for 10 years. People are more resistant to manipulation on it. They had a chance to come up with their own evaluation of risk.
The thing I heard most often after Boston was not “could this have been prevented?” but instead, “wow, that place was prepared for the marathon with all that security and it still happened”
I think this is a GOOD thing, a practical, rational assessment of risk that they came up with WITHOUT media who are still running the Bush-era tape on terrorism.
Jesse
@chrome agnomen (temporary kiwi): I can sympathize. I’ve lived outside the US for a few years now. Things were bad when I left, but they seem truly off the wall these days. So much so that I just cannot even fathom having a discussion of any substance with people who aren’t more or less like me. Even reasonability, the saving grace that binds people even when they disagree, has gone down the toilet. I know this is visible for many Americans living in the US, but believe me, it’s damn near unbelievable when viewed from the outside looking in. Try explaining to a Dutch person who’s more or less well informed, and who (astonishingly) still is inclined to see the US as a not completely insane place, what has happened in the last 4-5 years. Your heart just breaks.
Kay
Part of it is the conservative/Republican incoherence on “threat”.
They want people to believe two things at the same time. They want us to believe attacks by terrorists can be completely prevented but gun slaughters in schools and movie theaters and shopping malls are just part of the inherent risks that come along with Freedom.
Do people really divide “risk” or “threats” like that, into discrete categories, where we successfully prevent the one and allow the other?
danielx
This is true. Wingnuts will be outraged by whatever Sean Hannity and the Wingnut Wurlitzer tell him/her to outraged about, but most voters could care less – although I don’t underestimate the ability of ABC News, for example, to increase the interest of average voters to the point where they could possibly find Benghazi on a map.
After all, if there’s a Clinton involved (however tangentially) there must be a scandal somewhere (cough*blowjobs*cough). There’s nothing the Very Serious People would love better than a chance to hang up another Clinton scalp, even if the best they can hope for is to derail a Hillary 2016 effort. (“We simply can’t give those people another chance to trash the place!”) George Will (to name one) is no doubt salivating already at the chance of being able to harrumph disapprovingly over Hillary Clinton’s failure to foresee the attack. I can hear the holy name of St. Broder being invoked already…
Keith G
When things go bad during a presidential administration, the opposition party tends to jump all over it. – well, except for the Democrats in late 2001.
It seems that the Obama administration could have done a couple of things which would have made the current Republican campaign seem even more far fetched. That is not a critical observation. All administrations do things that in hindsight could have been done better.
The administration seems to be taking the tack that this story will die of its own lack of substance, which is fine unless more real or perceived changes in the information base dribble out over time.
In politics during times like these, I’m not sure that passive defense is the best strategy. Unfortunately, that seems to be Obama’s standard M.O.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Jesse: I don’t know if you’ve found this also but in my experience part of what I realized is how filtered and essentially conservative-tinged the news coming from the US is. I was teaching in the late 90s and I remember students, generally fairly typical left-leaning Parisians, who would ask me the most astonishing questions like that they had heard that the Clintons killed this guy, did I think that was really true? Or less astonishing but still surprising questions like was George W Bush a moderate, or a conservative?
The newspapers or magazines or TV channels where people were hearing this might be not at all conservative, but the raw material they were getting was so filtered already they just wouldn’t know better.
I also noticed just about four years ago that the basic expanded “Orange” cable package, not the cheapest one but the next level up, included exactly one choice for news in American English: Fox News. I kid you not.
So on the one hand while Le Monde or The Guardian are infinitely better than US outlets for World news, hearing US news from outside of it makes the stranglehold that conservative corporate news has on what even gets out even more evident.
Patrick
@Linda Featheringill:
The funny thing is they respected her in 2008. At least that’s what they claimed. Or maybe it is just because she never gave up in the primary fight against Obama, which they thought would help McCain.
Funny how things change.
@Bill E Pilgrim:
This is so incredibly stupid. Who the heck cares? So some silly talking points were changed. So? That’s the scandal? Give me a break!
That’s what makes the MSM coverage of Benghazi even more infuriating. Where the hell were they in 2002-2003? In the few press conferences that were held, it seemed it was only the foreign media that actually bothered to ask questions. Where was the MSM? And what makes Benghazi with 4 dead Americans worth more than Iraq with over 4000 dead Americans? I’m at a loss. No wonder the MSM is slowly dying and becomes more irrelevant by the day.
Schlemizel
@Keith G:
That was the approach Clinton took through all the phony ‘-gate’ investigations. It led to them finally getting something they could actually blow up into something close enough to a scandal that they could play their game out. I am not convinced it is the best defense either.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Patrick: Just in case my sarcasm wasn’t clear in that last line, I can in fact well imagine the motivation the NYT might have for not wanting people impeached over Iraq, since at the time they were still busy acting as the propaganda outlet for Bush and Dick Cheney in selling it to the country.
Hill Dweller
The latest ABC bullshit asks people to believe two things: 1) the e-mails Karl released, which congress saw last Feb., is supposed to show a cover up 2) the cover up was being planned while the President was publicly calling it terrorism. Both are laughable.
The Beltway’s slanted coverage on everything is largely driven by their disdain for Obama. They are absolutely giddy when report something perceived to be negative for the administration.
Obama doesn’t like them, respect them nor needs them. That infuriates them more than anything.
Schlemizel
In the absence of any actual screw up by the administration this seems to be the latest “impeachable offence” the goopers are reaching for.
In a thread yesterday I posted a quote from David Peatrus testimony and one of the shame hearings in which he clearly explained that the wording was designed to protect sources and methods of information gathering. But far be it from anyone in the media (or any damn Democrat who can fight his/her way to the microphone) ever bringing that up.
Patrick
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Your sarcasm came out just fine. I had no problems with your posting. I was just criticizing the NYT and MSM. The NYT really has blood in its hands for how it was pushing the Bush admin talking points in going to war. Talking points that in retrospect were fact less.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
I think what bothers me most about this whole Benghazi!!111 situation is the framing. On Bill Maher’s show last night his panel discussed it briefly. Bill talked about how the “embassy” was attacked and on and on.
No. Just no.
There will never be an end to this as long as there are people who think they are informed rattle on about this without getting the most basic facts right.
It wasn’t the embassy – the embassy is in Tripoli. It wasn’t a “consulate”. It just wasn’t. It wasn’t a State Department office. It (the “SMC” and the “Annex”) was/were most likely mainly a CIA outpost.
Bill and the others on TV who are trying to rebut or at least understand the GOP freakout theater on Benghazi!!1!! need to understand the facts (at least as we seem to know them now). Kevin Drum has a good synopsis. Basically, the ambassador was in Benghazi to try to help the CIA get weapons off the street. Things went pear-shaped and people got killed. The talking points were adjusted to try to shift blame away from the CIA, to protect the investigation, and to protect their efforts to continue to try to get weapons off the streets of Libya. As usual, State got most of the bad press and is getting beaten up by the Republicans.
That is all. Unless these facts can get out there, this is never going to go away.
Of course, there’s already an unclassified report (39 page .pdf) that goes into much of the actual facts of what happened in Benghazi!!!111!, not that it matters in freakout theater. I wish more people would read it carefully in the context of the Drum article.
[sigh]
[edited to fix URL href]
Cheers,
Scott.
Cassidy
E-cigs with the rechargeable battery and the tank you fill with nicotine fluid… Haven’t had a cigarette since November and sometimes only have a few puffs a day, slowly weaning my nicotine dependency.
Hoodie
Agree with your take on the importance of the domestic/foreign distinction, americans expect bad things to happen overseas. Why so much furor over a few diplomats when coffins are a fairly common cargo from Afghanistan? Our local paper routinely has obits for young Marines lost in some faraway place. Most folks waiting for a flight have seen the honor guard assembled in the terminal to take a casket from a plane. Nothing more special about diplomats and, in fact, some might not take it as much to heart because folks from their community don’t end up in the Foreign Service. This whole scandal has a beltway feel to it, but I guess that was also the case with Whitewater.
Last night, Chris Hayes was talking to a couple of DC types about Bengazi, and he noted that this type of scandal quickly is disconnected from whatever was its nominal topic and becomes a scandal simply because people keep talking about it, i.e., it’s self-generating and not just Fox keeps it going. The story now is not what happened in Bengazi, but how this “scandal” is going to affect Hillary Clinton’s 2016 prospects. It’s easy to fall into that narrative such that the question of whether there really was a scandal to begin with is obscured. Part of the reason it isn’t is a scandal is that fucked up things like this happen in government operations, particularly overseas, hence expressions like FUBAR and SNAFU. Regular people tend to know that.
Weaselone
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
I am under the impression that the SMC is State Department and that the “Annex” was the CIA outpost.
Tokyokie
@Bill E Pilgrim: Just the difference between CNN International and the version of CNN we get over here is astonishing (and I don’t just mean getting cricket rather than baseball scores). Or at least it used to be; I’ve been stateside for more than a decade now, but I was watching CNN International pretty regularly during the Clinton persecution.
@Weaselone: And if the outpost in Benghazi wasn’t handling visa applications and the like, then it wasn’t a consular office, even if it was under the auspices of the State Department.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Weaselone: Maybe, but note that the report very carefully doesn’t say “State Department Special Mission Compound” or “CIA Annex”. Instead it says things like:
There are many words that are obviously and deliberately left out in those sentences. The “bureaus in Washington charged with supporting the post” is very broad.
It is my understanding that “Special Missions” routinely include people from lots of agencies, not just State. (I can’t prove that at the moment, though.)
Understand that I’m not saying the State Department is blameless in the lack of appropriate security and having a good escape route. (They did, however, request additional funding for security and were denied…) It’s mainly that the public official information does not mention the CIA’s involvement and their responsibility at all. The attempted blame-shifting in the talking points was a continuation of this attempt to keep the CIA’s activities in Libya under wraps. Continued reporting and pontificating in the media about “the attack on the Embassy/Consulate in Benghazi” and the like is just wrong and feeds into destructive memes.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
22over7
Well, my morning fishwrap has the scandal plastered across the front page, and the morning editorial calls for hearings to get to the bottom of why the talking points were edited 12 times (this was italicized in the editorial, something I’ve never seen before).
So it begins. Now the White House will be “on the defensive” and “not forthcoming” about their editorial style and why talking points about possible terrorist activity were not something something on national teevee and why did the President relax in front of his monitor with a beer and watch in real time as brave Americans died by his orders because something something he’s a muslim monster and Hillary actually did the deed herself.
Death Panel Truck
@NotMax: The stress of being in the Gray Bar Hotel for two months is going to be so overwhelming that the first thing she’s gonna do when she gets out is light up.
FlipYrWhig
@Schlemizel: agreed that the Petraeus bit does the most good, and I also don’t get why it isn’t being brandished by everyone. It also has the virtue of analogy: when the cops make a statement to the public, they often leave out details so that they can weed out good information from bad.
FlipYrWhig
@22over7: “12 times” is beyond stupid. I was working with a colleague on wording for a certificate to give students, and we changed _that_ wording at least 4 times.
Roberta in MN
Try setting your quit date. Clean your car, house, walls everything in the mean time so no smoke smell. Set an appointment at a SPA and get a detox wrap and a massage, drink about a gallon of water when done for 24 hours, it will flush the rest out. I did that 12 yrs ago and never had a craving for a smoke since. No lung disease, no coughing up tar. But you really have to make up your mind that this time you are going to really quit. Preparation is half the battle.
Good Luck. ((((hugs))))
Not Sure
@danielx:
“After all, if there’s a Clinton involved (however tangentially) there must be a scandal somewhere (cough*blowjobs*cough). There’s nothing the Very Serious People would love better than a chance to hang up another Clinton scalp, even if the best they can hope for is to derail a Hillary 2016 effort. (“We simply can’t give those people another chance to trash the place!”)”
Why do you all think the 2008 PUMA “movement” existed? Does anyone seriously think that the same people who would later join the Tea Party would have supported Hillary Clinton had she been nominated in 2008? No, they had this huge stockpile of crap to throw at her, a stockpile that still exists, that only needed to be dusted off.
You wait. 2016 will arrive, and it will be HRC vs. some version of the Seven Highly Beatable Dwarves (which may or may not include Vice President Biden), and the GOP’s strategy will revolve around getting the Democrats to nominate one of the latter, or if one of them turns out not to be a dwarf after all (see Biden), to pick HRC so they can finally unleash the pent-up fury of 2008 that they didn’t get to use.
kerFuFFler
The real tell that the wingnuts are not basing the opinions about Benghazi on actual evidence is that even before this long awaited testimony they were asserting that this new inquiry would reveal facts that would force Obama’s impeachment or resignation. They just simply knew it!
They need no evidence to believe whatever they want to believe.
Death Panel Truck
@Roberta in MN: Or you could just slap on a patch every day. I did that in April 2000, and I haven’t had a cigarette in 13 years. There’s a lot to be said for weaning the body off nicotine gradually.
Weaselone
@FlipYrWhig:
One of my master’s courses required the summary of our group projects be no more than a double-spaced page in length. It wasn’t uncommon for each member of the 4 or 5 person team to submit 3 or more edits before we agreed on a finalized version.
rdldot
When you boil this all down, the GOP is pissed that Obama used political spin to defend his admin and if he hadn’t, the GOP could have used political spin to attack his admin. That’s all there is to it.
patroclus
I don’t think I’ll ever forget where I was and what I was doing when I heard the outrageous news that talking points were changed in an inter-agency process for a Sunday Morning chat show!@!!
priscianus jr
@Bill E Pilgrim: “Today’s example from the NYT claims that the White House is “scrambling” and “on the defensive” from shocking revelations, citing the authoritative sources for these revelations as “the Weekly Standard” and “ABC News”.”
Yes, I saw that too. What a load of bullshit.