Conservatives ridicule GOP Benghazi committee members: Hillary is too smart for them

The reviews are rolling in for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's performance before the GOP-led House Benghazi committee and they are uniformly "loved her, hated them" -- even among conservatives.

Writing for the New York Post, longtime conservative commentator John Podhortez praised Clinton's performance.

"Simply as a matter of political theater, over the course of many hours of testimony, Clinton performed brilliantly," he wrote. "She assumed a calm, deliberate demeanor with her opening statement and never surrendered it. The more she sounded like a policy wonk, the less she seemed like what the Republicans clearly wanted her to seem like: a cynical political animal."

On MSNBC's Morning Joe, host and former GOP congressman Joe Scarborough called it a "technical knock out" for Clinton with regular Mike Barnicle adding, "If this committee had handled the Watergate hearing, Richard Nixon would have finished his term."

Nothing however will sting the members of Gowdy's committee like ultra-conservative commentator Erick Erickson calling the whole exercise a "waste of time," while adding Clinton is "too bright" for them.

Writing on his personal blog, Erickson said there are still questions about Benghazi but that this committee is not the one to turn to for answers.

"The hearings are a waste of time because everything about it is politicized and nothing is going to happen. There will be no scalp collection. In fact, it is clear from today’s hearing that Trey Gowdy and Peter Roskam seem to be the only two people on the committee of either party who are capable of asking exacting, precise questions. Most of the rest of the committee just wants to grandstand for the folks back home as either prosecutors of or defenders of Hillary Clinton," Erickson wrote.

He continued, "Mrs. Clinton too is far too bright to be trapped in this or any questions. There have been some, by Trey Gowdy typically, that have clearly caused Mrs. Clinton to be flustered, but the long term effects of that will be to make her a martyr to her own side."

Erickson continued to defend Gowdy, but later took another shot at Reps. Susan Brooks (R-IN), Jim Jordan (R-OH), Mike Pompeo (R-KS), Martha Roby (R-AL), and Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) calling them "a carnival road show of back bench congresscritters playing to the cameras."

Watch the video from Morning Joe below, via MSNBC: