Kirsten Powers: Hillary derangement syndrome derailed Republicans Hate-blinded Republicans' fruitless Benghazi interrogation could have followed Clinton script.

Kirsten Powers | USA TODAY

Hillary Derangement Syndrome has struck. So deep in its grip are many conservatives that the only explanation they can imagine for Clinton’s rave reviews following her marathon testimony before the Select Committee on Benghazi last week is a liberal media conspiracy.

Here’s the truth: If Hillary Clinton is to be the next president of the United States, Republicans will have no one to blame but themselves. In fact, their bungling and bullying at Thursday’s hearing should count as an in-kind donation to the Clinton campaign.

What happened in Benghazi matters. Investigating security failures, especially those that resulted in the deaths of Americans, is a laudable endeavor. But does anyone really believe that’s what the Republicans were up to last week?

Asked by reporters following the hearing if anything new had been uncovered during Hillary Clinton’s eleven-hour grilling, Benghazi committee chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., came up empty. "I think some of [Rep. Jim] Jordan's questioning — well, when you say new today, I mean, we knew some of that already. We knew about the emails," he stammered. "In terms of her testimony? I don't know that she testified that much differently today than she has the previous time she testified."

Perhaps if Republicans had spent less time obsessing over Clinton friend Sidney Blumenthal, they might have uncovered some useful information.

Instead, members of Congress bore down on Clinton, demanding to know why Blumenthal had her personal email but Ambassador Chris Stevens — who died during the Benghazi attack — did not. But is it really a mystery as to why a friend of at least two decades would have her email address? Moreover, during the hearing Michael McFaul tweeted, “As ambassador in Russia, I enjoyed multiple ways to communicate with Secretary Clinton. Email was never one of them.”

It was back to the 1990s. Again, we had the spectacle of Republican members of Congress so blinded by hatred of the Clintons that they couldn’t stop their overreach. At one point, Gowdy salaciously read from Blumenthal’s emails to Clinton in which her friend trashed various members of the Obama administration and the president himself. What did this have to do with Benghazi? Nothing.

As Gowdy dripped with sweat and his GOP cohorts sneered and snarled, Clinton remained calm and cool beyond reason. She looked exactly like the person you might want answering that 3 a.m. call.

During a particularly nasty line of questioning by Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., conservative Commentary Magazine editor John Podhoretz tweeted, “Why doesn't Pompeo just go over and swear her in for president now — if he goes on like this he'll practically get her elected.”

Indeed, Republicans never fail to overplay their hand with the Clintons, pushing lukewarm Democratic voters into their arms.

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Or as Markos Moulitsas, the founder of the liberal website Daily Kos, tweeted during the hearing: “Hillary was ‘meh’ with significant portion of the activist left. Thanks GOP, for helping change that!”

Not all conservatives are selling the line that the media are carrying Clinton’s water here. The Washington Examiner’s Byron York characterized the day as a “marathon hearing that didn’t accomplish much” and Erick Erickson called it a “waste of time.” GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee told Fox News that Clinton “looked like she had weathered the storm.” As the hearing wound down, Washington Post reporter Bob Costa reported that, “Outside GOP cloakroom tonight, many [Republicans were] subdued as they discussed Benghazi Committee.” He noted that there was “no celebrating” and that privately GOP members admitted that Clinton was “formidable.”

But it wasn’t just that Hillary Clinton performed well at the hearing. It was that the Republican Members of Congress were an embarrassment. They were unfocused, partisan, condescending and angry. This all fed into the belief by many Americans that the hearing existed not as a truth-finding expedition, but as an effort to tarnish the likely Democratic presidential nominee.

The Clinton campaign themselves couldn’t have scripted it better.

Kirsten Powers writes weekly for USA TODAY and is author of The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech.

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