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If there's potency to Clinton's close guard of her emails, using a personal address on a private server to keep strict control of what's made public, it's that the ordeal makes her look secretive and untrustworthy -- exactly the line of attack Republicans have been employing against her for decades.

READ: Bill Clinton declines to weigh in on Hillary's emails

But House GOP investigators' eagerness to put Clinton in their crosshairs and keep the details of her latest scandal front-and-center is a reminder that they face a risk, too: Turning Clinton into a sympathetic figure, instead of allowing her to do the damage herself.

Over the years, Congress and the Clintons have gone a number of rounds. And while the Clintons have endured, past congressional Republicans have been burned.

Newt Gingrich was at the top of the political world when he became speaker of the House in 1994. Four years and a Monica Lewinsky investigation and Bill Clinton impeachment later, Gingrich was done.

More recently, the GOP's unchecked desire to attack its least-favorite Democrats has backfired with President Barack Obama in office, too -- most recently when a push to use Department of Homeland Security funding as leverage to undercut Obama on immigration failed. Facing self-imposed political fallout, House Republicans were forced to concede just hours before the key anti-terrorism agency was to shut down.

That the right was champing at the bit to go after Clinton over her private emails was evident this weekend.

SEE ALSO: Jeb Bush must win over conservatives, poll shows

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said Saturday in Iowa that the Justice Department should "absolutely" investigate whether Clinton broke the law by exclusively using a personal email address on a private server.

The attacks continued on Sunday news programs. Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-South Carolina, chairman of the House panel investigating the attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, said on CBS' "Face the Nation" that "there are gaps of months and months and months" in the Clinton emails the State Department has turned over.

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Hillary Clinton emails: Some in GOP resist overreach

Hillary Rodham Clintons use of personal email accounts as secretary of State mimicked her predecessors but drew attention to her penchant for secrecy as she begins what appears to be a second presidential run.

Clinton turned her personal email over to the State Department last year so it could be saved for history, following both the letter and the spirit of the rules, Nick Merrill, a spokesman for the presumptive Democratic candidate, said in a statement Tuesday.

Yet many of her emails became part of the record only when Clinton messaged State Department employees at their official addresses, he said, a practice that stops short of ensuring that every email Clinton wrote made its way into federal archives. The explanation left out what happened to her emails to foreign officials or others outside the government and what security concerns were raised by her use of a private email account.

Clintons allies defended the practice, with one liberal group labeling questions about it a right-wing attack. Merrill cited former secretaries of State of both parties who did the same thing.

Like secretaries of State before her, she used her own email account when engaging with any department officials, Merrill said. For government business, she emailed them on their department accounts, with every expectation they would be retained.

The Clinton camps response recalled earlier instances of her political instinct for privacy and protection, honed over years in public life. As first lady in the early 1990s, for example, the secrecy surrounding the closed-door healthcare reform negotiations that she spearheaded for President Clinton helped contribute to their failure.

Now, with Clinton widely considered the front-runner for her partys presidential nomination even though she has yet to declare her candidacy, her team is facing questions about her high-profile role as the nations top diplomat during President Obamas first term.

If the secretary was doing what she was supposed to do under the law, why would the State Department have to ask her for her emails back? asked Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, the chairman of a House select committee looking into the attacks on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, that happened while Clinton ran the department. Four Americans were killed, including the ambassador.

Word of Clintons private email account, first disclosed by the New York Times, put pressure on the White House to answer questions about an administration that Obama long has promised would be the most transparent in history. His team is supposed to conduct business on government email, yet some officials apparently exchanged messages with Clinton at one or more private email addresses when she was secretary of State.

The top White House spokesman said he wasnt sure whether anyone in the West Wing suspected Clinton wasnt using an official email address like everyone else.

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Hillary Clinton's use of private email not unusual, but still raises questions

If theres one thing we know for certain about Hillary Clinton, its that:

Shes running for president.

What her e-mails say

The quantity of her pantsuit collection

She knows how to laugh at herself.

Or at least, the version of herself on Saturday Night Live, where she has been a subject of blond-wigged, blazer-clad impersonations for more than two decades. Do I really laugh like that? she asked Amy Poehler when she appeared on the show as a candidate in 2008. (Poehlers answer: Oh, uh, yeah, well)

If when Clintonruns for president in 2016, SNL will be tasked again with assigning a cast member to play her for the duration of the election campaign. This weekend, we got a glimpse of who that choice may be. Kate McKinnon kicked off Saturdays show portraying a Clinton who proves she has nothing to hide amid the controversy over her e-mail use. Nice try, she says, lounging on a floral sofa. Those e-mails are clean as a whistle. This is not how Hillary Clinton goes down.

How does McKinnon compare with her predecessors? We cant go much farther without praising just how good Poehler was at the gig.This site of SNL archives counted 17 Poehler-as-Clinton appearances, many alongside Tina Feys unforgettable impersonation of Sarah Palin.

In her memoir Yes Please, Poehler said she loved playing Clinton as ahighly focused and slightly angry woman who was tired of being the smartest person in the room. The two were apparently on good enough terms for Clinton to write aletter to Poehlers son Archie when he was born.It is signed, Sincerely yours, Hillary Rodham Clinton*. Next to the asterisk she wrote, Otherwise known as your mothers double!

Before Poehler, there were a series of other Hillarys, includingAna Gasteyer,Janeane Garofalo andJan Hooks, who played her first. When Hooks died in October, her impersonation of Clinton as first lady was praised as one of her best acts, along with impressions ofNancy Reagan, Sinead OConnor and televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker. We dont imagine Clinton will be attacking Bob Dole anytime in 2016, but Hooksknew how to set the bar:

Read more:
Who will be SNLs Hillary Clinton in 2016?

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