On Benghazi, don't bet a trey against an ace

The most that any loyal Republican could have hoped for in the ashes of the Benghazi hearing  was that nobody watched it.  It was an episode of Our  Gang Comedy played by Zombies that left committee chairman Trey Gowdy and his six GOP compatriots reeling in the face of a powerfully  cool and collected woman  who is likely to be the Democrats' presidential nominee.

As we tuned in to the telecast for short bursts of the 8-hour and 20-minute  interrogation of the former secretary of state, we could only wonder  why the accusers didn't  once realize how much more they were adding to their awful image as jackasses on the loose.  And for Hillary Clinton it was a triumph over mostly white guys whose testosterone was working overtime - a clear victory for the ascendancy of women in politics.

Even the party conservatives were astonished by the Republican panel's inept stagecraft.
Red  State blogger Erick Erickson huffed that it was a "political spectacle and a bust".  John Dean, Nixon's man, thought it was "embarrassing".  Others used words like "disaster"  to vivify the work of the modern Inquisition.

Not the least of the panel's toilers was Ohio's very own  Rep. Jim Jordan, a former Ohio State University wrestling coach known mostly as the chairman of the  ultra-right-wing Freedom Caucus.  His maddening rush at Clinton with debunked Benghazi tales earned him the honor of being first among the "obnoxious" panelists (He would be wise at this point to turn down any challenge  to engage in Indian wrestling with Clinton.)

After awhile Fox News,  which had been primed to bury Clinton with this event, apparently shrunk from the idea as the testimony worked to Hillary's favor.  Fox  began cutting away for  commentary from its stable of carefully chosen "experts".

To Trey Gowdy who says he ain't going to stop the $4.5 million hounding of Hillary,  I can only remind him that in poker,  "an ace always beats a trey".