The Ad that Might Have Changed the Outcome of the 2012 Election

Do you remember the “It’s 3 AM in the Morning” ad for Hillary Clinton that ran during the heated and protracted 2008 Democrat presidential primary campaign? If not, here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yr7odFUARg

Flash forward to the 2012 campaign, just a few weeks after the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi. The Republican National Committee produced the following ad that Gov. Romney and his “senior advisors” chose not to run:

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/05/exclusive-the-rnc-benghazi-attack-ad-that-never-ran/

Many Republicans will be dismayed to learn that this ad was never aired, but one has to consider the reception it would have received: likely outrage from the establishment media that Mr. Romney was “politicizing this tragic incident”.

Yet, for Mitt, running the ad might have shown some moxie and motivated many more Republicans to vote rather than stay home as post-mortem election analyses have revealed.

Today, ABC News is reporting on e-mails from the State Department that confirm the doctoring of the so-called talking points that UN Ambassador Susan Rice offered up on five Sunday morning talk shows citing an online video that was offensive to Muslims as the reason behind the sacking of the consulate. 

This revelation occurs just after senior State Department officials testified before a House committee that everyone on the ground immediately knew and reported to Washington that this was an attack by Islamic radicals and that the video was never an issue. It turns out a report from the CIA included reference to protests outside of the US Embassy in Cairo that were thought to be sparked by the video. It now appears that the State Department and/or the White House picked up that snippet from the CIA cable regarding Cairo and decided to make it the centerpiece of their “narrative” on the Benghazi incident.

And over at CBS, Sharyl Attkisson, is reportedly irritating many of her management bosses with her dogged pursuit of the story that much of the national media has dismissed...first as much to do about nothing, and recently as a partisan attack led by House Republicans.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/sharyl-attkisson-of-cbs-news-a-persistent-voice-of-media-skepticism-on-benghazi/2013/05/07/a6006118-b749-11e2-b94c-b684dda07add_story.html

The move to discredit and impugn the integrity of the State Department officials who testified before the House Committee is well underway. It's rather ironic to see some Democrats now trash the concept of "whistle blower” protection for these Congressional witnesses—a concept that they have long championed.

However, that may no longer be a viable strategy for the White House and Democrats in Congress as the story begins to build forward momentum and forces a reluctant media to salvage whatever credibility they have on this issue. 

I’ll even ask my Democrat friends (yes, I have a few), can you imagine the hue and cry of the national media if this incident had occurred under a Republican administration?

Watching “Morning Joe” today on “Lean Forward” MSNBC, it was amazing to listen to the various commentators. Joe Scarborough, the former Republican congressman from Florida, has begun to shift his upper eastside Manhattan perspective, and is actually suggesting that this story is finally gaining some traction. Yet, the group, which included Cokie Roberts from ABC, Al Hunt from Bloomberg News and Sam Stein from The Huffington Post, scoffed when someone on the panel suggested that this might be emerging as a serious scandal for the White House.

Both Roberts and Hunt actually laughed at that idea with Hunt quipping, “Perhaps a kerfuffle, but not a scandal”.

Maybe it’s time to remind everyone that nobody died at Watergate and yet that brought down a president. Do you think that Watergate would have ever culminated in the resignation of President Nixon if he had enjoyed the kind of relationship with the media that President Obama has? While there was a full-court press on to find out the facts about Watergate...and rightfully so...the current media has been largely AWOL on Benghazi.

Where was President Obama during the attack? We know that he flew off to a fund-raiser in California the following morning, but what about the night before?

Was he in the Situation Room? Was he actively monitoring the events taking place in Libya? Do you think we'll ever hear a prominent Democrat Senator ask the question that Senator Howard Baker (R-TN) asked during the Watergate hearings:

"What did the President know, and when did he know it?"

Of course, these are the questions that a responsible news media would ask. But that hasn't happened. It’s not even been a case of the usual slanting of the news in the administration’s favor. It’s been more about avoidance of the issue altogether as if it were entirely off their radar.  This is largely the same media that expended far more resources sending all kinds of reporters and investigators to Alaska to “dig up dirt” on Sarah Palin after she became the GOP vice-presidential candidate in 2008.

For whatever reason, the Obama administration has been reluctant to acknowledge the continuing threat of Islamic terrorism. When Major Nidal Hasan killed 13 soldiers in a 2009 attack at Ft. Hood in Texas, the administration classified the incident as “workplace violence”. And as soon as the Boston Marathon bombers were either dead or in custody, the word from Homeland Security and the White House was that this was the act of two lone perpetrators with no connection to terrorist influences or groups outside the country. Well, we all know how long that interpretation lasted.

And now attention turns to Hillary Clinton. Will her famous “What difference does it make” rant during an exchange with Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) come back to haunt her if she decides to run for president in 2016? The Democrat worker bees are already scrambling to protect the queen at all costs. Yet, as the finger pointing shifts between the State Department and the White House, Hillary might find herself at the mercy of the hard ball Chicago pol who took her out in 2008.

And knowing the penchant of the Obama administration, she would be wise to stay away from any buses.