The Republican scream machine can pat itself on the back, since in the last three months Hillary Clinton's favorability rating has dropped nearly 10 points (from 61 to 52 percent). Quinnipiac's polling director attributes the slump to the ill effects of the Benghazi bug.
But has anything really changed for the worse, or simply caught up to electoral reality? Quinnipiac says "48 percent of voters [now] blame her either a little or a lot for the death of the American ambassador in Benghazi." If that statistic seems familiar, it may be because Mitt Romney received 47.2 percent of the national, 2012 vote. Partisanship--not Benghazi--is behind the fundamental accounting here; any issue would have served Benghazi's purpose.
What, on the other hand, should worry the scream machine is Quinnipiac's associated polling. Rand Paul's favorability rating stands at only 32 percent, and Jeb Bush's--the adult's--is an embarrassingly paltry 29. Clinton beats them both in a head-to-head by 8 points.
So scream away, GOP machine, and add a few more pats on the back. You'll lose the White House--again--but probably not by double digits! Victory is yours.