With Obama safely re-elected, the goal is now to protect Hillary Clinton. Last week, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) called upon Speaker of the House John Boehner not only to retract, but to apologize publicly for, an inter-committee report that suggested Clinton had ignored requests for additional security in Libya.

On MSNBC, a channel that serves as the mouthpiece for the Democratic Party, Rev. Al Sharpton–who also serves as an informal White House adviser–described the Benghazi investigation as the “new vast right-wing conspiracy,” a reference to Clinton’s claim, as First Lady, that Republicans were merely out to target her husband and that he had not committed any wrongdoing in the Monica Lewinsky affair that led to his impeachment.

Though there are undoubtedly some political motives present, Democrats’ claims are largely a projection of their own political agenda in Benghazi, which has remained consistent from the start: to shield the party and its leaders from responsibility for a major terrorist attack on American sovereign territory.

That agenda far exceeds any pursued by Republicans, whose goals, however political, happen to include the national security interests at stake.