Let me say that I’ve talked to President Clinton. We had a good visit, and I congratulated him. . . .campaign that the President was my opponent and not my enemy. And I wish him well, and I pledge my support in whatever advances the cause of a better America because that’s what the race was about in the first place, a better America as we go into the next century.
—Sen. Bob Dole on losing to Bill Clinton
President Bill Clinton, for all of his faults, was pursued for years. It started with White Water (Oh, things were so simple then!) and Travelgate and finally Monica Lewinsky and finally impeachment pushed by philandering hypocrites in Congress. There were also the real crazy conspiracies like the suicide of Vince Foster. When Barack Obama was elected, the nuttiness didn’t stop. There was the birth certificate. The idea that he was a Muslim. Then the idea that he was Kenyan, rather than American. There are a whole host of theories should you care.
In a long campaign to disenfranchise Democratically-oriented minority voters, Republicans have advanced the idea that voter fraud, due to a lack of voter identification, was a major problem. The purpose of requiring voter identification is to suppress votes. Period. But an excuse was needed for voter identification. Fears of voter fraud fit the bill. Trump’s claims of voter fraud ring true with his followers because the GOP has primed them.
There are reasonable Republicans out there. We have some here at BMG and in Massachusetts, though even here the GOP minority pushed a voter ID bill. But at the national level, reasonable Republicans have taken a back seat to the preservation of Republican power.
As Jeff Greenfield writes in Politico:
In truth Trump—and now his new mordant muse, Steve Bannon—are only carrying to extremes a tendency that has long been present in American politics, particularly inside the GOP. For Republicans, Hillary Clinton’s failings are only part of the argument: The broader case is that the Democratic Party itself lacks the legitimacy to govern. And that argument is one that has been a quarter-century in the making.
One of the roots of this argument can be found in the famous list of words that the then-Rep. Newt Gingrich and pollster/communications strategist Frank Luntz offered Republican candidates in the run-up to the 1994 midterms. “These are powerful words,” they said, “words that can create a clear and easily understood contrast. Apply these to the opponent, their record, proposals and their party. … decay… failure (fail)… collapse(ing)… deeper… crisis…… corrupt…destructive… destroy… sick… pathetic… lie… … betray… traitors…”
Whether this playbook led to the GOP takeover of Congress is debatable. The key point is that these words go to motive. They paint the opposition not simply as incompetent, but as malevolent. And it is an approach to politics that fits perfectly with the rise of right-wing talk radio, whose most prominent practitioners roundly reject John Kennedy’s observation that “civility is not a sign of weakness.” Contra Bob Dole, the adversaries of Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage and company are indeed the enemy. At about the time Gingrich and Luntz were offering their version of “30 Days to a More Incendiary Vocabulary,” Rev. Jerry Falwell was actively engaged in selling “the Clinton Chronicles,” a film that accused the Clintons of murdering their political foes. Today, you can find this argument recycled on a regular basis on The Drudge Report.
Nationally, I don’t think there’s much hope for the GOP. Massachusetts may have Charlie Baker, but he’s balanced off by Sam Brownback, Mary Fallin, Rick Scott, and Scott Walker. We may not end up with the craziness of Maine’s chief executive, but the Republican Party is finally collapsing under its own internal contradictions. Trump gives us an idea of what will slither in and try to replace it. Time will tell whether it succeeds and how well the United States will fare as the GOP splits apart.
Bill Clinton was not impeached over sex. Like Tom Finneran, he lied under oath. Clinton lost his law license, etc. but was not convicted in the impeachment even though he was clearly guilty.
Was it wrong to impeach him? It depends on if you think perjury is a high crime. WHAT you lie about – sex or redistricting – is not the issue. The issue is the lie under oath.
(And you forgot the IRS files on Republicans that magically wound up in Clinton’s office – no explanation ever offered for that).
it seems to me that Finneran is more culpable in that the perjury offense he was convicted of a was a crime “involving violation of the laws applicable to his office or position.”
Next month, the Supreme Judicial Court is going to hear Finneran’s challenge to the retirement board’s decision that the law he violated was “applicable to his office or position” (he testified in a federal court challenge to the legislative redistricting plan the House put forward while he was Speaker that he had no knowledge of the plan). Because the retirement board found that the law he violated was applicable to his office, it rescinded Finneran’s state pension. He is trying to have his pension reinstated.
The SJC may disagree with me but I kind of like my odds.
Or even just a crime. Bill Clinton lied about something that wasn’t even a crime…. and to spare himself only a rather embarrassing admission, which, I daresay, is something to which we can all relate on some scale, though, that scale is neither nationwide nor involves salacious details for most of us.
Finnerans lie can accurately be seen as both a furtherance of the crime of being covertly involved in an illegal scheme of redistricting and an attempt to stymie the courts search for the truth of the crime. It is the uncovering of the latter for which he lost his pension, but it is in attempting to cover over the former for which he lied.
Yeah, coulda seen that one coming a mile away…
Typical. Your party spends so much time and effort making shit up about the Clintons, and bringing our attention back to the Clintons every time your party is caught pants down and ass out. You really think it’s going to work again?
Really now, be honest with yourself, if not with us… if your party spent one tenth as much effort on loving something as it does on hating someone, the whole country would be better off, wouldn’t it be? But no… hate, I guess, is just too addictive.
In the first three words of the diary.
.
… the mention of the IRS files just happened to spill out… ???
I call BS.
I might be interested in what you think about the behavior of your party… which is something I don’t recall you ever discussing… but it seems pretty clear that you’d rather talk about something, anything, else.
… “was pursued for years.” The passive voice clearly indicates that Bill Clinton is not the subject of the diary (If the the title hadn’t already clued you to the fact…) and that mentioning him is not an invitation to re-litigate the impeachment.
Mark Bail: “Bill Clinton was a victim of Republican skullduggery and… ”
Porcupine: “Yeah, but he deserved it. And, BTW, what’s up with those IRS files???” … and we’re off to the races!