Looking Ahead to Her Benghazi Testimony, Hillary Clinton and Allies Revel in House GOP's Jumble

As House Re­pub­lic­ans des­cen­ded in­to chaos Thursday with the sur­prise an­nounce­ment that Rep. Kev­in Mc­Carthy is no longer seek­ing to run for House Speak­er, one group of people had cause for cel­eb­ra­tion: Hil­lary Clin­ton and her al­lies.

Clin­ton is slated to be on the Hill on Oct. 22 for her long-awaited testi­mony be­fore the Benghazi Com­mit­tee—the very group at the cen­ter of what ailed Mc­Carthy’s short-lived cam­paign. And the more Clin­ton and her team can point to the House Re­pub­lic­ans’ dys­func­tion on the Hill, the bet­ter po­s­i­tion she’ll be in when she ar­rives for her testi­mony.

“Every­body thought Hil­lary Clin­ton was un­beat­able, right? But we put to­geth­er a Benghazi spe­cial com­mit­tee, a se­lect com­mit­tee,” Mc­Carthy said on Fox News last week, tak­ing the Clin­ton cam­paign from de­fense on the email story to of­fense against Mc­Carthy and the Benghazi com­mit­tee. “What are her num­bers today? Her num­bers are drop­ping.”

The com­ments, sug­gest­ing a polit­ic­al reas­on for set­ting up a con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tee, were enough of a polit­ic­al gift to Clin­ton’s cam­paign that they were the sub­ject of her first na­tion­al tele­vi­sion ad, which showed a clip of Mc­Carthy and said Re­pub­lic­ans “have spent mil­lions at­tack­ing Hil­lary be­cause she’s fight­ing for everything they op­pose.”

Her team also re­leased an on­line video fea­tur­ing a Kev­in Mc­Carthy from Iowa—who be­cause of his Twit­ter handle was re­ceiv­ing much of the ire meant for the Cali­for­nia con­gress­man—call­ing out the Benghazi pan­el for “spend­ing our tax­pay­er dol­lars to pay elect­or­al polit­ics.”

On Thursday, after Mc­Carthy dropped his bid, Clin­ton’s Twit­ter ac­count sent out a link to the video again, say­ing, “How about this Kev­in Mc­Carthy for speak­er in­stead?”

Clin­ton’s al­lies, too, im­me­di­ately pounced on the news of Mc­Carthy’s de­cision not to seek the speak­er­ship.

“Kev­in Mc­Carthy fell for telling the truth about a polit­ic­al charade. He ex­posed the par­tis­an ef­fort to sab­ot­age Hil­lary Clin­ton’s cam­paign and it cost him the speak­er­ship,” Dav­id Brock, who heads the pro-Clin­ton groups Cor­rect the Re­cord and Me­dia Mat­ters for Amer­ica, said in a state­ment. “The ques­tion that must be asked next is, now that his par­tis­an agenda has been ex­posed by his own col­league, will Benghazi Com­mit­tee Chair­man Trey Gowdy be the next to fall?”

Clin­ton spokes­man Bri­an Fal­lon, too, sug­ges­ted the cam­paign is far from be­ing done us­ing Mc­Carthy’s com­ments against House Re­pub­lic­ans.

“Kev­in Mc­Carthy’s truth­telling about the par­tis­an Benghazi Com­mit­tee will live on well past his doomed bid for Speak­er,” Fal­lon tweeted Thursday af­ter­noon.