Fifty words is a micron in the measure of a lawmaker's rhetoric. But these 50 words of declared House Speaker candidate Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) have instantly reversed the fortunes of Hillary Clinton's sagging campaign for the democratic presidential nomination:
Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she's untrustable. But no one would have known any of that had happened, had we not fought and made that happen.
Even better for Hillary, McCarthy's gaffe has further derailed a united Republican front.
By degrees, Clinton was already clawing back into her party's good graces. Public apologies for her ill-advised emailing ways and her actual and rare use of the word "mistake" were enough to curb media's enthusiasm for servergate and thus open the door for on-message and on-strategy campaigning.
But that McCarthy virtually acknowledged that the Benghazi hearings have been an orchestrated witch hunt are giving Hillary and her surrogates all they need to get the monkey off their campaign's back. Time, finally, for some offense.
For Hillary, there's a third and even better benefit to McCarthy's slip: The stabilization of Clinton's campaign removes, automatically, basic reasons for Joe Biden's considered challenge for the nomination.
From The Standard Table of Influence, here is a sampling of plays that have saved Hillary, exposed the house GOP leadership, and stalled Biden:
RECAST: Commenting on McCarthy's quote, Clinton called the admission, "Deeply distressing." The play was a recast, one of four strategies in the framing family of influence.
CHALLENGE: Clinton surrogates Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid immediately called for the disbanding of the house select committee. Their play was a challenge, perhaps a Bait, your politics depending.
PAUSE: The silence from the vice president now takes on a different meaning as media presume that Biden's ruminations are focused not on how his candidacy might save a failing party but be perceived as scuttling a party favorite (i.e., Hillary).
LABEL: To that end, pundits have speculated, however thinly, that Biden risks the role of a spoiler. The play by an ever-presumptuous media is the label.
Thanks largely to her arch enemies, Hillary is rising. She's being given the chance to position house investigations as proof of a vast right-wing conspiracy and of her personal and very presidential resilience. (Look no further than the social barometer of this week's Saturday Night Live skit where Clinton was cast as victim, not villain.) Now she's being heard on her pledge to raise incomes, tighten gun laws and and, oh yeah, she can't wait to testify Oct. 22, "... if the committee is still in operation," she almost snickers, an easy-to-read ping.
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