Four Years Later, Republicans Hope Benghazi Sticks To A Different Democratic Opponent

After President Obama coasted to victory in 2012, Republicans spent about ten minutes searching their souls for answers, before reverting back to their old ways and hoping for different results next time.

In that election cycle, of course, Mitt Romney did his best to exploit the attack in Benghazi to derail Obama’s re-election campaign. It didn’t work, and the president handily defeated him.

After that, Republican leaders promised a different party, one that would stop alienating minority voters and start offering real solutions.

Then they made Donald Trump – a man who has spent his entire substance-free campaign insulting non-white Americans – their presumptive nominee. Everything that doomed the Republican Party in 2012 is now embodied by its future nominee in 2016.

As the first night of the Republican National Convention rages on – “Make America Safe Again” night, to be exact – the GOP is pulling another page from that failed playbook by attempting to pin the Benghazi attack on Hillary Clinton – again.

They did this through a series of prime-time speeches, which consisted of everything from the mother of one victim saying Clinton “belongs in stripes” to Benghazi survivors once again putting forward the myth that a “stand down” order was given.

All this after the former Secretary of State was recently cleared of any wrongdoing in a report conducted and released by Republicans; after the GOP’s last nominee lost badly using the same strategy; after the American people have widely acknowledged that the Benghazi “investigation” was nothing but a politically motivated witch-hunt.

Republicans are once again hoping their emotional argument against Hillary Clinton works because they know they have no factual one to make.

Their renewed attempts to exploit a terror attack and pin it on another Democratic opponent are likely to yield the same result this year.

Sean Colarossi

Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.