Why Romney’s Not Talking About Benghazi Anymore

In conservative circles, the closing weeks of the election have involved a full-blown scandal: namely, that the Obama White House has covered up what really happened during the lethal September 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. The Obama administration first failed to adequately protect U.S. personnel in Benghazi, this narrative holds; didn’t respond forcefully enough to save the four Americans who were killed; tried to deny that a coordinated attack occurred at all; and has concealed what the president and his top advisers knew about all this and when. “The Benghazi scandal,” is how Fox News host Bret Baier referred to the story Thursday.

And yet Mitt Romney wants nothing to do with it. In the second presidential debate, Romney treated Benghazi as the most important national security of the moment. But Romney sidestepped the issue in the final debate and, as far as I’m aware, hasn’t raised it since. It’s true that the topic blew up in Romney’s face in that second debate. But Romney’s sudden and complete abandonment of the topic has still been something of a mystery.

Now the story has taken a new twist, as Massimo Calabresi explains . It seems as through the most important actor during the attack may not have been the president, but CIA director David Petraeus. That leaves the storyline more confused than ever. Petraeus, the reputed savior of Iraq, is a hero to many of the same conservatives who have been driving the Benghazi story in an effort to burn the president. Now it seems possible that their ire could burn the general more than the president. Although Friday’s reports indicate that the CIA responded fast and aggressively as the attack unfolded, it also appears that the agency c ould have been more vigilant about security at the site in advance. It also seems possible that Mitt Romney fell silent on this issue because he came to understand that Petraeus is at least as politically exposed as Obama. (Bear in mind that Romney was recently granted classified national security briefings, as is the custom for major-party nominees.)