During the Democratic presidential debate, CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked Hillary Clinton about her e-mail controversy and her appearance before Rep. Trey Gowdy’s select committee on Benghazi, which began to question her last week.
On CNN, Clinton denied any illegal behavior, saying it was simply a “mistake” and “wasn’t the best choice,” then claimed the investigation was just “a partisan vehicle, as admitted by House Republican majority leader Mr. McCarthy, to drive down my poll numbers.”
This mirrors the false narrative of other Democrats and their liberal apologists in the media. In fact, that wasn’t Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s meaning. Here’s the actual context of his remarks.
McCarthy was being interviewed on Sept. 29 by Sean Hannity on Fox News. Hannity’s audience includes a good many of those understandably angry conservatives driven to frustration by Barack Obama’s imperious presidency who have rallied around the House Freedom Caucus. That caucus is a group of about 40 ultra-conservative Republicans, about a fifth of the 247 GOP majority, critical of their mainstream conservative colleagues ─ whom they brand as the “establishment”─for not “fighting” hard enough.
Obama’s veto power and the ability of Senate Democrats to filibuster makes such a fight futile for now. But many on the GOP right don’t want to acknowledge or be constrained by the structural realities of the process. They’re largely responsible for pressuring John Boehner to step down as speaker. In his appearance on Hannity’s show, McCarthy, Boehner’s likely successor at the time, was seeking their support. When Hannity asked him how he’d differ from Boehner as speaker, he said, “What you’re going to see is a conservative speaker that takes a conservative Congress that puts a strategy to fight and win. And let me give you one example. Everyone thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable. But no one would have known any of that had happened had we not fought and made that happen.”
McCarthy’s point was that the damage to Clinton’s integrity was a consequence of this legitimate investigation. While his careless choice of words gave Democrats an opening to misrepresent his meaning, he never “admitted,” nor is it true that that was the only motive. Sure, politicians are political. It’s the nature of the beast. That’s why Democrats had no interest in investigating Clinton’s e-mail scandal or the IRS scandal targeting Republicans. But Gowdy’s committee is pursuing a just cause, and it’s not politics driving the FBI’s independent investigation of Clinton’s illegal negligence in guarding national security information.
In that same debate, Sen. Bernie Sanders sought to let Clinton off the hook when he asserted, “The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn e-mails.” But a Quinnipiac poll in August asked a random sample 1,563 voters to offer “the first word that comes to mind” when they think of Clinton. The most frequent response, with 178, was “liar.” “Dishonest” was second at 123, and “untrustworthy” came in third at 93. Independents joined Republicans in their low regard for Clinton.
Of course, it’s mostly Democrats who want to sweep this under the rug. Sanders certainly doesn’t speak for Americans as a whole. He’s an overwrought old radical, a throwback to socialists of the 1920s and ’30s, a fellow traveler who actually honeymooned in the Soviet Union, and a man frozen in a Marxian obsession of demagogic class warfare. His current popularity is a sad reflection of how far left that wing of the Democrats’ base has moved.
Clinton may win her party’s nomination in a pitifully weak field, but she’ll need the votes of a great many more Americans with, hopefully, higher ethical standards to become president.
Freelance columnist Mike Rosen’s radio show airs weekdays from 1-3 p.m. on 850-KOA.
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