Even Trump's Enablers Are Thinking of Voting for Clinton

It's rare that a single op-ed piece can encapsulate a political party in crisis. But Richard J. Cross III, a longtime Republican operative, has achieved that feat accidentally.

Cross is the latest member of the GOP to join the ranks of the Never Trump movement. His arguments in a piece for the Baltimore Sun are familiar. He doesn't like Donald Trump's call to ban Muslims from entering the U.S. He thinks his party's nominee does not embody the hopeful conservative ethos of Ronald Reagan and Dwight Eisenhower. He may just have to vote for Hillary Clinton. You've read all this before.

What makes Cross's op-ed so astounding is that he is the author of a prime-time speech less than a month ago that faulted Clinton for the murders in Benghazi, Libya. The speech was delivered at the Republican National Convention by Pat Smith, mother of Sean Smith, one of the four Americans who perished there in 2012. The speech included the unforgettable line: "I personally blame Hillary Clinton for the death of my son."

With all respect for Smith's pain and grief, this is bananas. Clinton made many errors with regard to Benghazi. She presided over a State Department that failed to respond to dozens of urgent requests from the outpost for increased security. She told the public that the attack was a demonstration gone awry, after she had told her daughter it was the work of an "al Qaeda like group." She advocated for toppling Muammar Qaddafi but failed to fill the vacuum in Libya after his regime fell. The review panel she commissioned after the attack was stacked with loyalists who didn't even bother to interview her. Mid-level officials were punished and senior aides skated.

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https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-08-18/even-trump-s-enablers-are-thinking-of-voting-for-clinton