John McCain is a grandstanding hypocrite who is still reliving the 2008 election.

There’s no other explanation for why McCain would run up and down the halls of the Senate, demanding hearings to find out what “really” happened at Benghazi and what the administration “really” knew, while actual hearings on Benghazi were taking place this week in the very committee John McCain sits on, and he didn’t even bother showing up.

McCain basically refused to take “yes” for an answer.

McCain is now claiming that he missed this most important hearing ever because of a “scheduling error.” Gee, what else was more important than something that McCain thinks merits “Watergate-style” hearings?

Wait for it…..

Alexander Abad-Santos of the Atlantic Wire recreated McCain’s schedule and the actual hearing schedule, and put them side by side in order to find out what “scheduling error” forced McCain to miss the Benghazi hearings that he’s been demanding for weeks. And what do you know: The “scheduling error” that prevented John McCain from attending the Benghazi hearings was John McCain’s own press conference demanding Benghazi hearings.

The man was so fixated on having Benghazi hearings that he missed the actual Benghazi hearings.

It’s kind of like if Moby Dick began with Captain Ahab catching the white whale, and then letting him go. It’s difficult to play the martyr when you already got what you wanted, and said no.

Senior Obama adviser David Axelrod wasn’t going to let that moment pass:

CNN’s Dana Bash says, in the video below, that “most of the Republicans” didn’t even go to the classified briefing on Benghazi.

Of course, what is McCain’s little cohort in this charade, GOP Senator Lindsey Graham, doing while this is happening? Graham is busy using the Libya tragedy for campaign ads. That was so kind of Ambassador Stevens to help Senator Graham out by dying.

These are the same Republicans who are claiming they’ll stop Susan Rice from becoming our next Secretary of State because of all the supposed unanswered questions that would have been answered at the classified hearing they didn’t even bother going to. (The fact that McCain, who picked Sarah Palin as his vice presidential candidate, thinks he’s qualified to opine on the qualifications of anyone for national office, is ironic to say the least.)

When McCain was first asked why he didn’t go to the briefing that he’d been demanding, he got a wee bit testy, per CNN:

When CNN approached McCain in a Capitol hallway Thursday morning, the senator refused to comment about why he missed the briefing, which was conducted by top diplomatic, military and counter-terrorism officials. Instead, McCain got testy when pressed to say why he wasn’t there. “I have no comment about my schedule and I’m not going to comment on how I spend my time to the media,” McCain said. Asked why he wouldn’t comment, McCain grew agitated: “Because I have the right as a senator to have no comment and who the hell are you to tell me I can or not?” When CNN noted that McCain had missed a key meeting on a subject the senator has been intensely upset about, McCain said, “I’m upset that you keep badgering me.”

And I suspect a number of Americans will be upset that John McCain’s best excuse for why he chose to play hooky, from what he’s describing as the most important hearing ever, is that he got confused.

Good thing he’s not sitting in the Oval Office.

Here’s CNN’s piece on it:

