Clinton tries to turn tables on congressional Republicans in new ad
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Version 0 of 1. Hillary Rodham Clinton is trying to turn the tables on congressional Republicans ahead of her testimony before a special House committee investigating the Benghazi attacks, with a new television ad accusing Republicans of using the tragedy for political gain. The cable television ad, set to begin airing Tuesday on CNN and MSNBC, seeks to capitalize on a leading congressional Republican’s candid claim that the House Select Committee on Benghazi has damaged Clinton’s standing in the 2016 presidential race. “The Republicans finally admit it,” an announcer says, before the 30-second ad cuts to House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) discussing the committee as a success story. “Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?” McCarthy said in an interview last week on Fox News that is excerpted in the new Clinton ad. “But we put together a Benghazi special committee. A select committee. What are her numbers today?” Clinton says the remarks from McCarthy, who is seeking to succeed retiring House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), reveal the House committee to be a partisan tool and its investigation to be a sham. McCarthy has said his remarks should not be interpreted to mean that he was acknowledging a partisan motive for the inquiry. “The mission of the Select Committee on Benghazi is to find the truth — Period,” McCarthy said in a statement issued Tuesday morning, reiterating a position he took last week after the Fox interview. “The integrity of Chairman Gowdy, the Committee and the work they’ve accomplished is beyond reproach. The serious questions Secretary Clinton faces are due entirely to her own decision to put classified information at risk and endanger our national security.” The committee’s chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), has repeatedly said he is only seeking facts about the 2012 attacks and the administration’s actions surrounding them, and has denied, along with Boehner, that presidential politics play any role. The ad, however, disputes that. “The Republicans have spent millions attacking Hillary because she’s fighting for everything they oppose,” the announcer in the ad says. “From affordable health care to equal pay, she’ll never stop fighting for you, and the Republicans know it.” A spokeswoman for Boehner called the Clinton ad an attempt to distract from the probe. “This is a classic Clinton attempt to distract from her record of putting classified information at risk and jeopardizing our national security, all of which the FBI is investigating,” Emily Schillinger said in a statement Monday night. Clinton is scheduled to testify before the committee on Oct. 22. Benghazi is also likely to be among the topics raised at next week’s first Democratic presidential debate. The private e-mail system Clinton used when she was secretary of state came to light this year because of the Benghazi committee’s inquiry. The revelation breathed new life into the long investigation of the deaths of four Americans at a U.S. diplomatic outpost and a CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya. Clinton has long said she played no direct role in any security or other decisions that might have prevented the militant attacks, but the episode badly blotted her four-year record as the top U.S. diplomat. Clinton blasted the committee in an interview Monday on NBC’s “Today” show. She stopped just short of saying the panel should be disbanded. “Now that they have admitted it’s a political, partisan committee for the sole purpose of going after me, not trying to make our diplomats who serve in dangerous areas safer, that’s up to the Congress,” Clinton said. “If they are going to have it still running, I’ll be there, and I’m looking forward to answering questions about real things when I’m there, and I’m looking forward to having a chance to explain everything we’ve done, everything that I asked to happen,” she said. “But it’s not, it’s not appropriate what they have done from obviously their own admission.” The Clinton campaign released a script of the ad Monday night. The campaign did not say exactly how much it is paying to air the ad, but a campaign official said the airtime will cost less than $100,000. Network television advertising, which is more expensive than cable, has been a major expense for Clinton’s campaign and one reason she spent nearly $9 out of every $10 raised between June and October. Her network ads are airing only in New Hampshire and Iowa and will have cost more than $6 million by the end of this month. Since the ads began airing in August, Clinton’s poll numbers have slipped badly in both states. She now trails her leading challenger, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), in New Hampshire and is running only slightly ahead of him in Iowa. Although she leads the Democratic field nationally, that could change with the possible entrance of Vice President Biden to a primary race that had seemed a given for Clinton only a few months ago. |