It’s beginning to sound, to me at least, that the Benghazi story is going to stay in the news through the 2016 election cycle.

After the election, it will disappear.

http://mediamatters.org/video/2014/06/01/fox-panel-laughs-at-laura-ingrahams-unrelenting/199529

Why then? It’s becoming clearer by the week that right wing think tanks, media outlets and politicians want to keep the issue roiling as long as former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is in the hunt for the presidency during the next two years.

If she decides to run, which most folks think is a given, it will continue to be a discussion topic right up to Election Day. Then we’ll have the result. She’ll either be elected or defeated by a Republican; I’m assuming, of course, that she’ll be the Democratic nominee for president.

After that, the issue goes away. Quietly. Suddenly. Just disappears.

It kinda/sorta reminds me of the birtherism issue that dogged Barack Obama through two election cycles. There were those on the right who questioned whether he was constitutionally qualified to serve as president, alleging he was born in Kenya, rather than Hawaii.

We all heard the yammering, yes? Forget that we’ve heard very little from the left on the issue regarding another possible presidential candidate, Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who actually was born in Canada. Mama Cruz is an American, however, which makes him a U.S. citizen.

Hey, wait a minute. Wasn’t President Obama’s mother an American, too, which made him qualified to serve as president — even if he had been born in a foreign country?

Whatever. The birthers stopped their preposterous notion the moment he was re-elected in 2012.

I’m betting the same thing will happen with this Benghazi matter, no matter the outcome of the House select panel’s investigation into that horrible Sept. 11, 2012 fire fight that killed four Americans at the consulate in Libya.

These “scandals” do have a way of materializing — and vaporizing — at politically opportune times.