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Democratic operative James Carville?s attempt to tamp down talk of Hillary Clinton?s email scandal may have instead added more fuel to the fire.

Washington Is James Carville hurting Hillary Rodham Clinton more than hes helping her? Thats the question rattling around the punditocracy this morning following Mr. Carvilles inelegant defense of Mrs. Clintons use of personal e-mail on ABCs This Week on Sunday.

Carvilles long been a staunch Clintonite and one of the former first couples primary surrogate spokesmen on television. Hes been all over the cable shout shows ever since news broke that as Secretary of State Clinton relied on a home-brew private e-mail server. His primary line: its nothing, just business-as-usual; something Colin Powell and other Secretaries of State did too.

Its made up. You take pi, you subtract 3.1415 and you dont end up with very much, Carville told ABCs George Stephanopoulos on Sunday.

But Carville also said this, in a rare unguarded comment: I suspect she didnt want Louis Gohmert rifling through her e-mails, which seems to me to be a kind of reasonable position for someone to take.

Republicans pounced on this as an inadvertent admission that Clinton was just trying to avoid legitimate congressional oversight. You see, Representative Gohmert is a GOP member of the House from Texas, a member of the Judiciary Committee whos an outspoken conservative. To put it mildly.

Clinton might want to avoid Gohmerts scrutiny, but as an administration official shes not really supposed to do that, at least as far as members of Congress are concerned.

At the least, this is a sensitive subject that the Clinton camp would want Carville to avoid. Instead, he should have gone on a trademark rant, where he becomes red in the face and fires out an emotional defense of his subject in the Louisiana accent that earned him the nickname Raging Cajun.

As performance art these rants are really quite impressive. But his offhand comment will give Republicans a talking point theyll be waving around for days.

Team Clinton is going to have to ask their surrogates to stop helping, and soon. At this rate, Clintons backers are going to help her right out of the race, writes Noah Rothman at right-leaning Hot Air.

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Did James Carville reveal secret behind Hillary Clinton's e-mails? (+video)