Cook: GOP’s Benghazi Bubble Bursts

When bad news needs to be publicly released, one strategy to mitigate the political damage is to dump the news on a Friday evening. The bad news is reported on Friday night television broadcasts and is often buried in Saturday’s newspapers, both are times when people aren’t usually paying attention to the news. And by Monday, the bad news can quickly become old news.

This strategy was in full effect last Friday when the House Intelligence Committee released its findings after an extensive investigation of the attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya in 2012.

Some quick background before I get to the findings and the Friday bad news dump.

“Benghazi!” has been the battle-cry for right-wing media outlets and Republican politicians for the past two years since to them the 2012 attack should disqualify Hillary Clinton from becoming President in 2016. They advanced many conspiracy theories surrounding the attack and subsequent responses by the Obama administration and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

So why would the Republican-majority House Intelligence Committee want to bury the findings of their two-year investigation?

From U.S. News and World Report:

“A two-year investigation by the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee has found that the CIA and the military acted properly in responding to the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, and asserted no wrongdoing by Obama administration appointees.

Debunking a series of persistent allegations hinting at dark conspiracies, the investigation of the politically charged incident determined that there was no intelligence failure, no delay in sending a CIA rescue team, no missed opportunity for a military rescue, and no evidence the CIA was covertly shipping arms from Libya to Syria.”

In the immortal words of Governor Rick Perry: Oops.

Republicans dumped their report on a Friday evening because they were embarrassed that their two-year investigation didn’t turn out the way they planned.

Moreover, Republicans with Presidential aspirations probably still plan to use the Benghazi attack against Hillary Clinton. Dumping the news on Friday might allow them to ignore the facts.

For some Republicans, it’s better to bury the facts than change their disproved storyline.