Editorial Boards: GOP's Politically-Motivated Charade 'Wasteful'...'Disband it Now'
Americans, from both sides of the aisle, are tired of Republicans abusing taxpayer money. They know the truth: this is a politically-motivated charade. And after Mrs. Clinton's testimony, Editorial Boards are describing it for what it is: ‘wasteful'.
Washington Post Editorial: The GOP's unfortunate Benghazi hearing
The House Select Committee on Benghazi further discredited itself on Thursday as its Republican members attempted to fuel largely insubstantial suspicions about Hillary Clinton's role in the 2012 Benghazi attacks. Grilling Ms. Clinton all day, they elicited little new information and offered little hope that their inquiry would find anything significant that seven previous investigations didn't.
USA Today Editorial: Benghazi panel asks all the wrong things
Thursday's hearing was hardly a sober and thorough effort to find fact. That work has already been done in seven prior inquiries by Congress and one by a State Department review panel...With nothing terribly damning to present as evidence, Republicans were left with a dog-that-didn't-bark attack.
The hearing had a kind of theatrical air to it…Republicans were the accusers, intent on turning their reams of documents into a gotcha moment...The questions asked Thursday weren't very good. They weren't even the right category of question.
Congress should be asking: What is being done to bring to justice the terrorists responsible for the Benghazi tragedy? (The alleged ringleader, Ahmed Abu Khattala, was apprehended last year, but an estimated 20 others remain at large.) What, if anything, can the United States and its allies do to prevent Libya from turning into a wholly failed state or an ISIL stronghold? What is being done to stop a new wave of refugees from flooding across the Mediterranean into Europe? What, if any, U.S. diplomatic outposts remain vulnerable to attack?
Those would be far more fruitful lines of inquiry than the Benghazi committee's political theater, on which it is time to bring down the curtain.
Sacramento Bee Editorial: Disband the Benghazi committee, now
For 17 months, to the tune of $4.7 million, Republicans on the House Select Committee on Benghazi have been promising the nation that the hounding of Hillary Clinton was something more than a waste of tax money and a partisan fishing expedition. On Thursday, they put her on the stand for their big reveal.
They failed.
What did raise an eyebrow was how obviously uninterested the Republicans were in learning from Benghazi, in what might be done to make U.S. embassies safer, for instance, or to stop government shutdowns from threatening funding for security.
It's time to disband this costly farce of a committee. Even as political theater, it hasn't worked.
New York Times Editorial: Hillary Clinton and the Benghazi Gang
The pointless grilling of Mrs. Clinton, who fielded a barrage of questions that have long been answered and settled, served only to embarrass the Republican lawmakers who have spent millions of dollars on a political crusade. In recent days, some prominent Republicans have even admitted as much.
The Republicans are expected to issue a report. May it be the final chapter of a wasteful and counterproductive exercise that accomplished nothing.
Huffington Post notes, "even conservatives realize Hillary Clinton's Benghazi Committee hearing was ridiculous." [10/22]. As Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said: "the Select Committee is nothing but Republicans using millions of taxpayer dollars" for their radical ideology. The GOP must terminate this taxpayer-funded farce and end the Republican obstruction, distraction and dysfunction that has been pushing hard-working families down a dangerous Calendar of Chaos.