Liberal Blogger: ‘How Dare You Smear Hillary by Quoting Her Accurately!’

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Sen. Ron Johnson asked a question about Benghazi and Hillary Clinton said this: “What difference, at this point, does it make?”

I’m not making this up. You can check the transcript or watch the video. She said it. But it is so wrong for anyone to quote that sentence:

But, of course, the ripped-from-context quote is “What difference, at this point, does it make?” It’s already being seized on by National Review and Fox News and The Wall Street Journal and The Weekly Standard and Glenn Beck’s Blaze and Michelle Malkin’s Twitchy and the Free Beacon and, of course, Breitbart. There’s already a popular hashtag, #whatdifferencedoesitmake. . . .
Will the wingers be able to turn this decontextualized soundbite into a deceptive sign of Secretary Clinton’s indifference?
This is an Andrew Breitbart/James O’Keefe tactic, but its use is not limited to O’Keefe and the carriers of the Breitbart torch — this is a mainstream GOP tactic.

Quoting what a Democrat says is a tactic! An Andrew Breitbart/James O’Keefe tactic! A mainstream GOP tactic!

The point seems to be: Anything that is bad for Democrats is wrong. These unfair “tactics” include (a) direct quotes, (b) facts and (c) math.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

 


68 comments

  4. Think about it; Hillary is the husband of the first “black” President. So DarthKeller is right, quoting Hillary accurately will be called racist, as well as sexist.

  6. This insistence on accurately citing what actually happened and quoting what really was said is just going to aggravate your false consciousness, McCain.

  7. […] That’s an accurate quote of what Secretary Clinton said in response to a question during a Senate hearing today. The left side of the blogosphere has the vapors over the right side’s picking up that quote and running with it. It’s unfair, they say, just like using such underhanded rhetorical tricks as math or facts. […]

  9. She’s saying since they are gone, shutup about why. Essentially “Who cares what happened, because they are already gone…” Like not holding a murderer accountable because the victim is gone.

  10. Like I posted on twitter, in essence, what difference does it make if 4 people are dead in a car as a result of a driver running a red light/stop sign, if the driver had been drunk, or if they were stopped and a crazy shot all 4 and killed them? They’re all dead, regardless of how. So, our laws must know be made equal as to punishment, no involuntary, no manslaughter, no 1st degree/2nd degree. According to Hillary, it doesn’t matter what caused their deaths, they’re all dead. It doesn’t matter if the cause were a video, racially, religiously motivated, or incompetence on the part of the State Dept and its leaders or even higher up, what difference does it make, they’re all dead. She obviously bumped her head way too hard.

  11. The context is even more illuminating. She said what difference does it make, we’re trying to make sure this never happens again. How on earth do you stop something from happening again if you don’t figure out how it happened in the first place?

  14. In fairness, a perfectly accurate quote, out of context, can be utterly misleading.

    And yes, that is a “tactic”. “Being completely honest and scrupulous” is also a “tactic” – one that sacrifices immediate potential gains from lack of scruple for long-term trust, for instance.

    And in even more fairness, the context, from the transcript, does ameliorate it a bit. (It doesn’t really matter, at the highest level, whether it was “a protest” or not, and the rest of her paragraph in response is perfectly valid.)

    Problem is, “what difference does it make?” is a bit rich when the US government was pushing the ‘it was protests’ line for… what, weeks? And the guy who made the video is … still in jail, isn’t he?

    The Secretary of State ought to at least mention those inconvenient facts, say the first was a ghastly error [at best], and that the second is completely wrong.

    Of course, she won’t.

  17. At what point would it have made a difference to Hillary to know for sure what happened? At what point is a reference to time, something that is important in her comment. At that point (9/11) it was important to have a quick response, therefore Susan Rice. Now, with the election behind us, what does it matter?

  18. This incident brought this to mind:
    T. S. Eliot’s poem “The Portrait of a Lady” has an excerpt from The Jew of Malta:

    “Thou hast committed/ Fornication: but that was in another country,/ And besides, the wench is dead.”

  19. “Shut up, she explained…”

    That’s what she really meant. But it was heartfelt and spontaneous. That’s why she was reading from the script in front of her…

    Clinton’s are all lying scumbags. Always have been. Always will be.

  20. And why should I believe you want to stop it from happening again when you chose not to act to stop it while it was happening the first time?

    It’s rich that people who use the line “if it saves just one life, it’s worth it” wouldn’t even use some jet fuel to scare the fecal material out of the people firing the mortars at our consulate.

  21. What’s even better than her article are the commenters. They sure are an angry bunch of little trolls!

  26. “Out of context” seems to be a get out of jail free card for liberal partisans. They rarely, if ever, bother to explain how the context changes the meaning.

  30. The difference is: If Benghazi had happened under a Republican administration the media would have been calling for heads and would not have kept this hidden away to reelect their golfer in chief. But it happened under a Democratic administration so no worries. water under the bridge, coulda/shoulda/woulda, there was a game on TV, I had cramps, it interfered with my Tee time.

  32. Was it because of a protest, or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they’d go kill some Americans? What difference, at this point, does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, Senator.

    That paragraph is just incoherent. If your job is to “figure out what happened” then your job is to answer the question of whether it was “because of a protest, or was it because of guys out for a walk,” and therefore it makes a difference. If you’re competent at your job, that is.

  34. Hey, children died at Sandy Hook … “What difference, at this point, does it make?”

    To make the argument, “What difference, at this point, does it make?”, at an oversight hearing is like saying that the laws really don’t matter anywhere so why should be ever try to “fix” them.
    And YES, expect to hear this line tossed her way for … ever.

  35. Sexist, racist, chauvinist, Fordist… I get called so many “ists” that it’s hard to keep up.

    Please don’t send me to the camps. I’ll learn. I’ll do better next time. Just please don’t send me to the camps!

  36. ** And by “Fordist” I mean “one who thinks Ford vehicles are the best”, not a fan of Gerald Ford… I’m too young to know of his presidency, so I can be neither fan or not to Gerald Ford.

  37. Experienced in dodging responsibility and avoiding prosecution, Hilary comes up with “What difference does it make” about the who, why and how of the death of Americans in Libya on her watch. It’s good enough for the media so she’ll skate.

  38. Remember that to Bathhouse Barry dead Americans are at worst mere “bumps in the road to revenge on my enemies.”

  41. Soon math will be banned, so they have that problem nipped in the bud. I was at the math store just today, and they are already running low on decimal versions of eighths. Not a single .125 to be seen. Still a few .875’s though. Almost nobody ever needs 7-eighths of anything.

  48. We need to turn BILLYDEVO over to the NKVD so he may be properly reeducated. They’ll teach him a lesson he’ll never have to remember.

  50. Time for Hilary to get a good lawyer and negotiate a good plea agreement for telling the TRUTH and letting the Obumble chips fall where they may.

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