The liberal Democrat political media complex purports to believe that the GOP is “playing politics with Benghazi.” But in truth, Benghazi was politicized by President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton during the 2012 election, when, as we now know, they willfully and knowingly fabricated a falsehood about the genesis of the terrorist attack there.

Indeed, that’s the upshot of yesterday’s stunning congressional hearing. Career public servant Greg Hicks revealed that, during a 2 am phone call on the night of the attack (Sept. 11, 2012), he personally briefed Hillary Clinton. Hicks said he told the Secretary of State that the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was under terrorist attack.

“The only report that our mission made through every channel was that this was an attack,” Hicks said.

Yet, Clinton, Obama, United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice, and other administration spokesmen all insisted that the attack resulted not from al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists, but rather from a spontaneous uprising of angry Libyan Muslims, who supposedly were reacting to some anti-Islam video produced in the United States.

That was a lie — a deliberate, bald-faced lie. And it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why Clinton, Obama and Rice were lying. They were in the midst of a presidential campaign, which they rightly feared might be lost if the public learned of their dereliction of duty in Libya.

(Of course, they needn’t have worried, because Mitt Romney sadly and inexplicably refused to press his advantage, but that’s another story for another time.)

Yet, ironically, congressional Republicans now stand accused of “playing politics” because they are trying to uncover a politically inconvenient truth.

“What difference at this point does it make?” yelled a flailing and histrionic Hillary Clinton during a January 23, 2013, congressional hearing on Benghazi.

“What difference at this point does it make,” indeed, when your destiny is the White House and nothing — absolutely nothing, not even a national security fiasco and four dead Americans — must stand in your way.

That may sound harsh, but it’s also the inescapable truth behind Hillary’s otherwise seemingly bizarre congressional testimony earlier this year.

So, yes, there are political games being played here, but they’re not being played by the GOP. The political games are being played by liberal Democrats committed to protecting Hillary from embarrassment and defeat.