Well, leaving the talking points aside for a moment, Obama himself was briefed on al-Qaeda involvement after the attack yet continued to flog that YouTube video for weeks. So even if there was a pure motive for editing the talking points in such a way (unlikely), there is no excuse for that.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/15/benghazi-emails-released-white-house

Excerpt: 

The series of email exchanges reveal that the vital phrase "with ties to al-Qaida" was later excised.    

The White House said this was done at the request of the CIA and not the White House and that the emails support this, showing that a CIA analyst said there was no intelligence at that point to support the assertion of al-Qaida involvement.

In an email from the CIA three days after the attack, it noted the reference to al-Qaida, suggesting it was complicit in the deaths of the four Americans, and a CIA analyst says: "Do we know this?"

There's the CIA doubt again. 

Okay, so again, let's assume they had the purest of motives there and that State's more political motives weren't the reason for this: why did the administration continue to push the idea of a protest for weeks after the fact when they certainly knew better by then?

They aggregated all mentions of think tanks....not just specific issues. There were some exceptions. For instance, if a member of Congress cited the think tank to criticize it, they excluded it from the analysis. For the most part, they included all mentions though. ADA scores are on specific issues though. I think they are generally based on around 20 issues per Congress. Even with the small sample, they are highly correlated with overall roll-call ideology scores.

If I'm reading it correctly though, the Gentzkow and Shapiro (there are a couple of them though) studies seems to be asking completely different research questions....probably not fair to compare them.

For weeks? 

http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/10/world/libya-attack-statements

September 12 -- President Barack Obama

 "The United States condemns in the strongest terms this outrageous and shocking attack. ... No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation."

September 12 -- Obama, at a campaign event in Las Vegas, again uses the "act of terror" line

He repeats the line again the next day in Golden, Colorado. "I want people around the world to hear me: To all those who would do us harm, no act of terror will go unpunished."

(That shows that he was directly referring to the Benghazi attack not the original 9/11 like you claimed)

September 20 -- Jay Carney

"It is, I think, self-evident that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack. Our embassy was attacked violently, and the result was four deaths of American officials."

 September 21 -- Hillary Clinton

"What happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack, and we will not rest until we have tracked down and brought to justice the terrorists who murdered four Americans."

Then we have Susan Rice saying the video was to blame on the 16th of September and Obama saying on the 25th that extremist militias were involved on The View on ABC:

"We're still doing an investigation. There's no doubt that (with) the kind of weapons that were used, the ongoing assault, that it wasn't just a mob action. We don't have all the information yet, so we're still gathering it. But what's clear is that around the world, there's still a lot of threats out there." Obama also said "extremist militias" were suspected to have been involved.

Sounds like there was confusion on the intel for about 2 weeks, but several people in the administration (including Obama and Clinton call it a terrorist attack in that time). 

In that time there were intelligence officials talking about how, initially it was believed to be a mob.

September 28 -- Statement by Shawn Turner, spokesman for Director of National Intelligence James Clapper

"In the immediate aftermath, there was information that led us to assess that the attack began spontaneously following protests earlier that day at our embassy in Cairo. We provided that initial assessment to executive branch officials and members of Congress, who used that information to discuss the attack publicly and provide updates as they became available. Throughout our investigation, we continued to emphasize that information gathered was preliminary and evolving. As we learned more about the attack, we revised our initial assessment to reflect new information indicating that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists."

If it was a cover up why are Clinton and Obama both calling it a terrorist attack? They called it other things too because they weren't sure of the intelligence. 

Also even if the attack was inspired by the anti Muslim video that doesn't cancel terrorism. There have been terrorist attacks in the past for anti Islamic actions.

Think tanks generally only focus on a couple issues however...

and regardless... I don't really see a better study out there.

The Gentzkow and Shapiro study does have it's issuse.  For example it's local newspaper only... but it's still pretty interesting.

They find technically find a slight leftword leaning slant compaired to max profitability, but can give no actual explination for this slant.

Either way... I see little reason to cite worse studies to try and discredit an imperfect study.  I'd argue that all things considered... the Gloscue study is still the best currently available on that level.

Again though, i'd hold the self identification studies, along with what reporters see as the "middle" vs American public opinions view as the middle as the best studies still. 

Yeah, it took two weeks before Obama unequivocally called it terrorism and disavowed the notion of a mob action. In the interim they consistently pushed the video for some reason. On September 18th he was on Letterman, again blaming the video and saying that "terrorists and extremists" used it as an excuse to "attack a number of our embassies, including the consulate in Libya". That's obviously not true, as he well knew. Other embassies had to deal with unruly protesters, not terrorists, and the attack in Libya was a pre-meditated and well-coordinated attack that had nothing to do with some obscure video. It was in revenge for our killing of al-Qaeda's al-Libi.

2 weeks? He called it an act of terror the next two days after the attack as I just posted and as you can find in that link, he just didn't name the party behind it. By the way, the Republicans had been asking for these emails for months now that they're out to the public they show not one shred of evidence of the White House or the State Department ordering the CIA to cover up evidence.

Once again where is the cover up? Obama calls it an act of terror the next day and Clinton calls it an act of terror 10 days after the fact. If you count 10 days as 'weeks' then that's your prerogative (in regards to Clinton).

Also, if the attack was in response to the video it wouldn't be considered terrorism?  And terrorists and extremists sounds like a very accurate description of the party that attacked the consulate. 

Yes, of course it would be. However, by referring to multiple embassies he was conflating all the events that day when only one was attacked by terrorists.

It's just strange that this continued for so long when they knew there was no basis for it. Two weeks later at the UN, it was the same thing. He condemned the video but said that no video could justify attacking an embassy.