AP taunts GOP: You can’t make us turn on Hillary, suckers

I know how it seems. You watch these hearings - especially the devastating testimony of Gregory Hicks - and you think, "There's no way Hillary escapes this unscathed."

But come on. You know how scandals go. It has nothing to do with the facts. It's not a scandal unless the media decides to treat it as a scandal, and they're not going to treat this one as a scandal for one simple reason: They just don't want to. Associated Press writer Charles Babington, a D.C. insider type to a T, basically says so in a new piece this morning:

Politicians love few things better than a scandal to trip up their opponents, and Republicans hope last year's fatal attack on U.S. diplomats in Libya will do exactly that to Hillary Rodham Clinton and other Democrats.

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History suggests it might be a tough lift. The issue is complex, the next presidential election is more than three years away, and a number of reports and officials have disputed criticisms of Clinton's role when she was secretary of state. Still, Republicans and conservative talk hosts are hammering away at Clinton's and the Obama administration's handling of the 8-month-old tragedy. A daylong House Oversight Committee hearing Wednesday starred three State Department officials invited by Republicans. Security was poorly handled in Benghazi, Libya, they said, and administration officials later tried to obscure what happened. But the three men offered little that has not been aired in previous congressional hearings. Afterward, Republicans all but acknowledged they're still seeking a knockout punch.

In other words, the media will not be forced to take the scandal seriously unless and until Republicans produce something so explosive and undeniable, there is simply no way the media can ignore it and escape with the slightest shred of credibility remaining. And no matter how credible Hicks may be, it's just his word against Clinton and her apologists, and that's more than enough of an escape hatch for the media. Because of that, they are free to cover the story in the manner they prefer. Actually, they would prefer not to cover it at all, but that option is really not available for them, so the next best thing is to cover it according to the following narrative: Republicans seek to create scandal and fail. It's a self-perpetuating story if ever there was one. The Hillary-did-wrong scenario can't take hold unless Republicans can sell it to the media, and the media do not want to buy. Thus, Republicans fail, and the media declare it to be so. Contrast this to the way the media covered the Valerie Plame so-called scandal, which was front-page news for months because they chose to treat her attention-mongering husband Joe Wilson seriously, and they couldn't get enough of playing up the notion that Karl Rove or some other juicy Bush Administration target had "outed" Plame as a CIA operative. Not only did that turn out not to be true, but it turned out it was widely known the whole time that State Department official Richard Armitage was really the one who had "outed" Plame, and had done so with none of the so-called motive everyone was trying to ascribe to Rove and others. The whole thing was completely phony and most of the media knew it the entire time, but they played up the story anyway because they liked the story. They will never treat Benghazi as a real scandal, and they will never change their Hillary-as-brilliant-genius narrative, because they simply don't want to. Maybe alternative media can get enough of the facts out to dog Hillary if she tries to run for president in the future. Lord knows there is plenty of other baggage from her history if anyone cares to pay attention to it. But that should show you something right there. Cattle futures. Billing records. Bosnia lies. Watergate shenanigans. Hillary is so dripping with sleaze, the media could destroy her political viability in a second if they ever wanted to. They wouldn't even need Benghazi, as damning as it is. But they want her to be the next president so they're going to ignore anything that contradicts the Hillary Greatness narrative. And at this point they're basically taunting the GOP by saying, "Ha ha! You can't make us bite on your scandal! Nice try, suckers!" And that's about it. The facts are compelling. And they won't make a dime's worth of difference.