It hit him smack in the face in the debate. Now the entire insinuation of a cover-up falls apart:
“Talking points” prepared by the CIA on Sept. 15, the same day that Rice taped three television appearances, support her description of the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate as a reaction to Arab anger about an anti-Muslim video prepared in the United States. According to the CIA account, “The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the U.S. Consulate and subsequently its annex. There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations.”
If you read David Ignatius' report on the declassified document dump, you see someing entirely plausible: a violent act of terror that was confusing in its origins, motivations, and planning for those trying to get a grip on the facts. We saw how Romney immediately tried to exploit it for political gain, tried again in the debate, and then tried to use it to undermine the Obama administration's very strong case that it has decimated al Qaeda. That last effort just blew up as well:
The assault on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi last month appears to have been an opportunistic attack rather than a long-planned operation, and intelligence agencies have found no evidence that it was ordered by Al Qaeda, according to U.S. officials and witnesses interviewed in Libya.
There's a reason the Romney campaign has eased up on this line of attack in the last few days. And it makes him vulnerable on the question in the next debate as well.
The Dish 