US Senate Democrats say the hours-long Republican grilling of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton over the 2012 Benghazi attack has actually put her in the White House.

Clinton tried to deflect Republican criticism of her handling of the deadly attack on the US consulate in the Libyan city of Benghazi during a testy 11-hour hearing before the House Select Committee on Benghazi on Thursday.

She accused the Republicans of playing politics over the attack at the US diplomatic compound in Benghazi that left four US diplomats, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, dead.

“I had somebody come to my home this morning and say, 'You know, I think that put her in the White House,’” Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein told reporters on Friday.

Feinstein, who led the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation into the 2012 attack, stated that “those [committee] rooms get hot. The lights get bright. I think she showed drive and a staying power and a motivation. ... I could see her across the table from [Russian President Vladimir] Putin.”

The frontrunner Democratic presidential contender has been praised by the media and Democrats for her marathon appearance, after a months-long damaging Republican campaign against Clinton's use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.

Senator Claire McCaskill, an outspoken supporter of Clinton’s presidential campaign, said that House Republicans “certainly didn't do any damage to Hillary Clinton's campaign for president, and since that was their goal, they get an F.”

Clinton had denounced the House Select Committee on the 2012 Benghazi attack as a “charade”, accusing the panel and its Republican chairman of wasting taxpayer money on politics.

Senate Democrats have repeatedly called on Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to shut it down.

On Friday, Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen told reporters that “it's time now to close this select committee. This has just been a partisan attempt to undermine Hillary Clinton. It hasn't succeeded.”

And, Senator Charles Schumer called the House Select Committee on Benghazi a “political sham,” pointing out that while Republicans “badgered” Clinton, they also “failed to lay a glove on her.”

However, independent analysts have called Clinton’s testimony before the House Select Committee on Benghazi a sideshow which deflected attention away from her role in destroying Libya, saying the former secretary of state should be prosecuted for war crimes.

“The most interesting part of the Hillary Clinton Republican committee show yesterday – and it is a show, a sideshow – was when one of the Republican members of Congress actually tried to get rid of the sideshow and deal with the actual issue at hand, which is not Benghazi but Libya proper, and particularly Hillary Clinton’s role in destroying that country,” journalist Don DeBar told Press TV on Friday.

“Representative [Peter] Roskam opened his interrogatory of Clinton by asking whether her statement that was captured on camera when she was getting ready for an interview – ‘We came, we saw, he died’ – about the murder of Muammar Gaddafi represented her policy towards Libya,” DeBar added.