It’s hard to overstate the importance of the smoking gun in the Benghazi case – the White House emails revealing that the administration’s narrative after Benghazi was cravenly political. To sum up the scandal, U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed by a terrorist, and the administration subsequently explained it away with a bogus story about a protest over a YouTube video in order to preserve Barack Obama’s campaign narrative. Then they covered up talking-points alterations to avoid the appearance of politicizing it.

Commentator Charles Krauthammer says this is critical, and he likened it to the only scandal ever to take down a president: Watergate. “[I]t’s the equivalent of what was discovered with the Nixon tapes,” he said, which is to say that it’s hard to argue that Barack Obama didn’t know about the cover-up.

Not that the White House won’t try to downplay it. In fact, White House Propaganda Minister Jay Carney tried to say that the Benghazi emails “were not about Benghazi. They were about the general situation in the Muslim world.” Sometimes even we’re amazed by the brazenness of their lies.

Meanwhile, former National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor says none of this is a big deal and we should move on. “Dude,” he said to Fox News’ Bret Baier Thursday, “this was two years ago. We’re still talking about the most mundane thing.” He wasn’t exactly referring to the murder of a U.S. ambassador when he said that, but that is, after all, what matters, and it’s hardly “mundane.”

Other Democrats are likewise trying to move focus away from the scandal. “Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi,” that’s all the media want to talk about, complained House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). “Why aren’t we talking about something else?” Because the 9/11 terrorist attack at Benghazi and the White House’s botched response and subsequent cover-up is one of the biggest political scandals in decades, that’s why. Well, she added, “If you all want to sit around and talk about Benghazi you can sit around and talk about Benghazi.” Addressing the subject later, she said, “I don’t think there’s anything new there.” Just keep repeating that BIG Lie.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) seems to grasp the importance of the new revelations, saying the administration “saw Benghazi as a political problem seven weeks before the election and they formed a political answer.” To do that, he said, “The White House created a narrative completely different from the intelligence. … The answer given about Benghazi by Susan Rice was a political answer and disconnected from the facts. … They were more worried about the president’s re-election than they were about telling the American people the truth. They did not give a damn about the intelligence. … When Susan Rice said, ‘I have no regrets, I gave the American people the best evidence available,’ that’s a bald-faced lie.”

Unfortunately, the Republican leadership questions about Benghazi, with a few exceptions, have been so disjointed that most folks listening to them have probably yet to understand the gravity of the lies and cover-up. It’s so bad that Democrats may actually want Republicans to keep the Benghazi issue going because it’s a good distraction from the Obama economy and the ObamaCare fiasco.

Perhaps something good will come of the fact that House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) has subpoenaed Secretary of State John Kerry “to answer questions about your agency’s response to the congressional investigation of the Benghazi attack.” Issa also noted, “The State Department’s response … has shown a disturbing disregard for the Department’s legal obligations to Congress.” Disturbing disregard definitely gets to the heart of the problem.

It’s time to put this case into the hands of either a joint congressional select committee or special prosecutor who can investigate this White House deception professionally. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) indicated Friday that he would seek to do just that. “Americans learned this week that the Obama administration is so intent on obstructing the truth about Benghazi that it is even willing to defy subpoenas issued by the standing committees of the people’s House,” Boehner said. “These revelations compel the House to take every possible action to ensure the American people have the truth about the terrorist attack on our consulate that killed four of our countrymen.”