If I hadn’t lived through what Charlie Pierce calls “the pursuit of the President’s penis,” I would be dancing for joy at the GOP’s dredging up all the muck (fake and otherwise) from the Clinton presidency. But I did, so I’m not. As a political tactic and/or strategy, it’s a sure fire loser. It may rev up their base but it will repel pretty much everyone else.
The recent spate of stories about Hill pal, Diane Blair’s papers, and how wingnuts plan to use them in 2016 goes beyond beating a dead horse. It’s like exhuming said horse and trying to put flesh back on the bones. What they really need is a reanimator, but instead they have Reince Priebus who is no Victor Frankenstein:
“I think everything’s on the table,” Priebus told Andrea Mitchell.
“I don’t see how someone just gets a free pass on anything. I mean, especially in today’s politics. So, I think we’re going to have a truckload of opposition research on Hillary Clinton and some things may be old and some things might be new. But I think everything is at stake when you’re talking about the leader of the free world and who we’re going to give the keys to run the United States of America.”
Hillary Clinton, Priebus added, “provides a lot of opportunity” for Republicans.
If the polls are any indication, the former First Lady/Senator/Secretary of State provides the GOPers with an opportunity to lose a third consecutive Presidential election. Re-litigating the overheated Clinton “scandals” is a recipe for defeat so I should be happy, but I really don’t feel like hearing about how Bill had Vincent Foster whacked and yadda, yadda, yadda. If this is the GOP’s answer to the “war on women,” they should consider asking a few actual women what they think of this. That would be too complex. They’d rather stick with a tried and true losing formula. And I thought Rand Paul was an outlier.
Speaking of Kentucky, another sign of Nineties nostalgia is/are (I had an agreement debate, I decided to let the grammar police decide) Republican demands on Allison Lundergan Grimes to return a small campaign contribution from Woody Allen. She probably will and maybe even should but is this what the political debate in 2014 should be about? Newt Gingrich liked talking about Woody and Soon-Yi in the Nineties as an example of “Democrat values.” Now that I think of it, the reason she *should* return the money is so we can at least shut down *that* angle of the endless Allen-Farrow family clusterfuck.
In the run up to the 2008 election, I was one of those people who didn’t want Hillary as the nominee because I thought that was the best way to avoid hearing the names Monica Lewinsky and Vince Foster again. I thought the GOPers would calm down and be less strident, especially to avoid looking racist if we elected a black President. I was obviously spectacularly wrong. It makes me feel like one of the characters in The Purple Rose of Cairo. I’m not sure whether I’d rather be in the movie or in the audience but I’m certain that most people do not want to buy a ticket to a revival of that Nineties show, Get Bill and Hillary. What’s next? A Ken Starr for President boom?
That is all.