Conservatives across the country are shaking their heads at the Republicans’ performance during the House Select Committee on Benghazi hearing Thursday, with many stating flatly the GOP blew the hearing and the chance to hold former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accountable for her involvement in the Benghazi disaster.

They are right.

The Republicans failed spectacularly, offering a confused strategy and weak line of questioning and doing little to prevent Clinton and her Democratic allies on the committee from effectively turning the hearing into a campaign opportunity for the Democrat presidential hopeful.

Related: Hillary’s Top 5 Benghazi Lies

With studied sobriety and even affectations of boredom, Clinton looked above the fray as the children on the panel fulminated.

The first thing Republicans should have done is to discredit thoroughly the farcical Accountability Review Board’s report on Benghazi, which didn’t touch Clinton. While Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., mentioned it in his introduction, the first line of questioning should have picked apart the ARB — and Clinton’s involvement in creating it — in detail.

Clinton’s — and the Democrats’ — insistence that the hearing was some sort of show trial rests largely on the line that Clinton was already cleared by the ARB. Exposing the ARB’s shortcomings early and decisively would have deprived her of a valuable crutch.

Instead, Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., began by questioning Clinton on her leadership role in the initial Libya invasion. At the very least, the Republicans could have started with the poor security situation and numerous documented — and denied — requests for increased security in Benghazi.

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Moreover, when these requests were mentioned, the Republicans mostly referred to overall numbers, offering few specific examples, which may have been far more valuable in discrediting Clinton’s claim of distance from decision making.

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Rep. Susan Brooks, R-Ind., had a good moment toward the end of the hearing when she effectively got Clinton to admit the then-secretary of state ignored the Secure Embassy Construction and Counterterrorism Act in failing to sign a waiver for security at the compound. However, this information might have been more useful earlier in the hearing, when Clinton first tried to excuse herself from any decision-making responsibility for security arrangements at Benghazi.

Furthermore, Clinton’s legalistic excuse for failing to sign a waiver — that the compound in Benghazi “was neither an embassy nor a consulate” — only left more unanswered questions about the true nature of the compound, its relationship to the nearby CIA annex, and Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens’ real reason for being there in spite of the danger.

If disappointing lines of questioning weren’t enough, some of the Republicans on the committee played straight into the Democrats’ narrative that the hearing was purely political.

If disappointing lines of questioning weren’t enough, some Republicans on the committee played straight into the Democrats’ narrative that the hearing was a purely political attempt to torpedo Clinton’s presidential campaign. They appeared overly hostile toward Clinton, and seemed concerned more with making her look bad rather than uncovering any specific truths about the events in Benghazi. Frequent berating and interrupting came off as politically motivated and petty, serving only to undermine Republican credibility.

By the end of his first line of questioning, Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga., was barely able to hide his contempt for Clinton, and Kansas Republican Rep. Mike Pompeo’s bizarre question about Stevens having Clinton’s home address was wholly inappropriate and off topic. These, and other moments like them, were shiny gift-wrapped wins for the Democrat spin machine and the effort to paint Clinton as the victim of a witch hunt.

Finally, the Republicans spent far too much time focusing on Clinton’s relationship with Sidney Blumenthal. While Blumenthal is certainly important when it comes to understanding Clinton’s overall approach to Libya, he has little to do with the most important questions surrounding the events of Sept. 11, 2012 in Benghazi.

Why did Clinton send Stevens to Benghazi considering how dangerous it had become? Was she aware of the specific terrorist threat in Benghazi? Did Clinton personally make the decisions to refuse Stevens’ requests for increased security? Did she personally prevent or hinder any response on the day that might have saved the lives of the men who died? And why didn’t she do more to, say, have her military counterparts at least send a plane to buzz the area?

Those were the important questions, and they were the questions to which the Republicans failed to get any satisfactory answers. Instead, the Republicans let petty politics and attempts at cheap point-scoring get in the way of smart strategy and sound questioning, giving Clinton the opportunity to play the victim — an opportunity she seized with great gusto, and success.