Via the Free Beacon, a valiant attempt to shame Democrats and their media friends into dropping their outrageously outrageous outrage about Republicans using the new Benghazi committee to raise dough. Valiant but futile, that is: Read today’s New York Times editorial on the committee and tell me how it differs from something Debbie Wasserman-Schultz’s office might put out. The left’s narrative on the committee is straightforward and unified — everything about it is illegitimate, from the GOP tilt of the membership (seven Republicans, five Democrats) to the pre-midterm timing to, yes, the sort of cash grab that Democrats engaged in themselves vis-a-vis Iraq. Any argument they can find to discourage the public from paying attention is an argument worth using. You’re not going to shame them out of that.

That being so, how much is Benghazi fundraising really worth to the GOP? Trey Gowdy thinks the party should lay off lest the committee come to be seen as some sort of political commercial. Republicans aren’t listening to him but they should. If they’re serious about the investigation, protecting its legitimacy is job one. And let’s face it, they’re going to reap political benefits from it whether they ask for them overtly or not. Money will come in and, more importantly, conservatives will turn out in November irrespective of whether a Benghazi envelope from the RNC shows up at the door. The more frantic the fundraising gets, the easier it’ll be for Dems to write Gowdy and his project off as a joke.