Losing It On Libya

Ed Kilgore examines GOP talking points on the Benghazi attack:

Conservatives have now had over a month to tie their endless finger-pointing over the events in Benghazi to some larger theme, and have basically failed. If I were them, I’d probably argue the whole series of incidents shows that the administration (and Democrats generally) think the Global War on Terror—which they never much believed in to begin with—ended with the killing of Osama bin Laden, and have been proven very dangerously wrong. But instead, some conservative have gotten distracted by their Islamophobia into going nuts over the administration’s “apologies” for an obnoxious video, and others have gotten distracted by their lust for war with Iran into making this all about “signals” of America’s “lack of resolve.” And Mitt Romney’s done a little of everything without much clarity.

Kevin Drum urges Republicans to give the issue a rest:

Republicans seems to think that this is some kind of huge gotcha moment that will show Obama as a weak and flailing leader on the world stage. But I suspect they’re caught up in their own echo chamber, the same one that insists Obama wants to take your guns away and has spent the past four years apologizing for America. But the more they dive into the conspiratorial weeds on this, the worse they look to ordinary Americans who don’t really mind that President Obama waited a few days to sift through the evidence instead of going off half cocked within a few hours. 

Adam Serwer looks at where Republicans went wrong:

Partisanship can be helpful in the search for accountability. But conservatives have been so eager to exploit the incident in Libya for political advantage that they’ve focused on inconsequential details like what the president said when. The facts surrounding the Benghazi attack are damning enough on their own. But thanks to their penchant for cherry-picking information, the GOP left their presidential nominee on stage with his mouth agape, struggling to understand how something he knew for a fact wasn’t a fact at all.