Aaron Blake at The Washington Post:
Republicans spent years pushing for investigation after investigation of the tragedy in Benghazi, Libya. But when it comes to the Jan. 6 insurrection, they’re already very much over it.
A new poll from Quinnipiac University is the latest to show Republicans don’t really want any type of investigation of the riots at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. The poll gave people a choice between the idea that it was an attack on democracy that should “never be forgotten,” and the idea that it’s overblown and it’s time to “move on.” Three-quarters of Republicans — 75 percent — chose “move on.”
That binary choice is a little overly simplistic, admittedly. It asks people to choose between two polar opposites, when they might be more in the middle. But when asked whether they support Congress’s investigation of Jan. 6, GOP support for the probe isn’t much higher. Just 29 percent of Republicans support the probe.
Done.
Perhaps most tellingly, it’s a huge contrast to how the party viewed the Benghazi investigations.
For months and years after the 2012 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi that killed four Americans, Fox News’s pollsters asked similar questions about people’s appetite for investigating it. And Republicans’ appetite was voracious and long-lasting.
In June 2013 — nine months after the attack — 88 percent of Republicans said they supported continuing to investigate. In November 2013 and February 2014, it was 83 percent. By April 2014, it was still only slightly diminished, at 77 percent.
In May 2014, the House GOP added a select committee to its previous investigations, bringing the total number to a half-dozen. The committee issued its final big report in June 2016.
But a full year later — in June 2017 — Fox News asked a similar question again. And lo and behold: 65 percent of Republicans still said it was either “extremely” or “very” important that the investigations into Benghazi continue.
This was just shy of five years after the attack, after six congressional investigations, including a select committee run by Republicans that had concluded its work. And nearly two-thirds of Republicans wanted to keep probing. That’s similar to the number of Republicans who basically said it was time to move on from investigating Jan. 6 even before the first big report landed.
There’s simply no other way to describe this other than what it is: rank hypocrisy.