The Hillary Privilege

Yesterday's hearings about the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi were a farce. Very few if any of the really important questions were asked of the star witness, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (see my blog post from yesterday for the questions that SHOULD have been asked of her.) Members of both parties in the Senate and House drooled over her, and many were overtly apologetic about having to ask her any questions at all. You could almost see each one of them hoping she'd still look on them favorably in 2016. "May the odds be ever in your favor." It was Congressional hearings, Hunger Games-style.

So: none of the real questions were asked. Nothing was really answered. Hillary emerged unscathed. And most Republicans looked even weaker for their unwillingness or inability to pose the questions that really matter and demand answers.

Remember when Hillary was a Senator from New York? In that capacity, she sat in her perch when top Bush administration officials came before her Committee. Secretaries Powell, Rice, and Rumsfeld all sat before her, and she showed zero mercy. She hyperventilated. She preened. She luxuriated in her faux outrage as she carpet-bombed them with her sanctimonious hectoring.

If a Republican Secretary of State had come before Senator Clinton today, she would have been pounding the table and screaming, "Four Americans died! DIED! And you sit here and talk so matter-of-factly about how well we normally do in protecting our people around the world, but we need to make improvements! Are you kidding me? You aren't fooling me, and you're not fooling the American people!"

Not a single Republican member of Congress even attempted to go there with her yesterday. The "Hillary privilege" will not permit it. Instead, her "interrogators" slobbered over her, apologized for having the put her through this testimony hell, thanked her for her "extraordinary service," let her BS answers slide all over the place, and began jockeying for a position in her 2017 Cabinet.

The "Hillary Privilege" is a powerful thing, and don't think for a second that she doesn't know it.