Jennifer Rubin's Zany Benghazi Angle To Filibuster Reform

Washington Post political blogger Jennifer Rubin is, like most pundits sympathetic to the Republican cause, upset over the move by Democrats to change Senate rules so that judicial and executive branch nominees will no longer have to face down a filibuster in order to get a confirmation vote. “It's a bad way to run the country,” Rubin writes. But at the same time she is wistful for what might have been had the filibuster been done away with long ago, and what the nation might have discovered about... Benghazi?

Rubin writes:

If only. . .

The president cared as much about Iran's nuclear option as he does the Senate's.

The nuclear option was in place for superbly qualified Republican-nominated judges like Miguel Estrada whom the Democrats filibustered.

The nuclear option had prevented Sen. Barack Obama from blocking the confirmation of John Bolton as United Nations Ambassador in 2005.

The nuclear option had removed fear of a filibuster and allowed Susan Rice to get nominated as secretary of state so then she could have been questioned about Benghazi.

This is a perplexing hypothetical. At the time Susan Rice's name was being thrown around as a potential nominee for Secretary of State, there were few people in the media who opposed the idea more than Jennifer Rubin. “From my perspective, it makes no sense to have a three-ring confirmation hearing and lose over a subpar nominee such as Rice,” Rubin wrote on December 4, 2012. When Rice asked that her name be withdrawn from consideration for the position, Rubin wrote: “To be frank, she should never have been floated as a possible nominee.”

But now she's shifted to wishing Rice -- a nominee she considered wholly unqualified for one of the most senior position in government -- had been nominated. Why? To answer questions about Benghazi.

This is also fairly confusing. Susan Rice had nothing to do with the attacks in Benghazi. She came under fire from conservatives for her series of Sunday talk show appearances in which she adhered to administration talking points on the Benghazi attacks -- talking points that were drafted and approved by the intelligence community. Rice had no input whatsoever into the crafting of the administration's response. It's not clear what we'd learn from the questioning Rubin pines for.

But really nothing about this makes much sense. It's just another example of how for conservative pundits, all roads lead back to Benghazi.