“Pretty Much How Things Go”: Every Clinton Scandal Is Exactly The Same
We don’t yet know whether there will actually turn out to be something nefarious in the emails that Hillary Clinton somewhat belatedly passed on to the State Department, but I feel confident in predicting that this Clinton scandal will likely play out just like every other Clinton scandal. For those of you who don’t remember the 1990s, here’s how it works:
- Bill and/or Hillary Clinton does something that on first glance looks a little sketchy.
- The news media explode with the story, usually including insinuations that something illegal or corrupt took place.
- Republicans quiver with joy, believing that this scandal will finally be the one to reveal the true depths of the Clintons’ villainy.
- Clintonworld adopts a bunker mentality, insisting that they did nothing wrong yet trying to limit the amount of information that gets out, thereby antagonizing reporters.
- As the eight zillion journalists assigned to the story learn more information, the story grows increasingly complex, yet no actual illegality or corruption is found.
- The story drags on for months or even years, with Republicans never wavering in their certainty that the only reason we haven’t learned the awful truth is the Clintons’ stonewalling.
- The more committed conservatives begin to lose their minds, eventually coming to believe spectacularly outlandish theories about what actually happened.
- The whole thing peters out, and reasonable people conclude that while Bill and/or Hillary might have shown better judgment, they didn’t actually break the law, violate their oaths, betray their country, or anything else their opponents imagined.
There are variations, of course, but that’s pretty much how things go. And even though it’s possible there’s an email somewhere in which Clinton instructs her paramour Ayman al-Zawahiri to launch the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, it’s probably how things are going to go with this one, too.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect, March 6, 2015
“Name An Accomplishment”: A Question Republicans Shouldn’t Ask
With her boffo appearance at CPAC, it became obvious why Carly Fiorina masquerades as a presidential candidate: She loves the attention! According to National Review, her CPAC remarks scored a hit, if only because she trashed Hillary Clinton’s record as Secretary of State. Fiorina certainly proved her cred as a Fox News Republican. She eagerly parroted familiar talking points about Clinton – “Name an accomplishment!” – and accused Clinton of saying, “What difference does it make?” in response to the attack on the Benghazi consulate. Such craven willingness to lie for a cheap cheer at CPAC is all they – or we – need to know about Fiorina.
“Name an Accomplishment” is a game that everyone can play, however, and I daresay that Hillary Clinton and her avid defense team have plenty of answers. As for Fiorina, she came close to wrecking Hewlett-Packard, a major U.S. technology firm whose owners and shareholders hope never to see her face again. Many of her former colleagues there consider her utterly without qualifications for any role in government, no matter how small. (They make her sound like a pretty awful person, too.) Beyond her dubious résumé, Fiorina’s most memorable achievement was the moronic “Demon Sheep ad,” nominated by NPR’s Ken Rudin as “the worst political ad ever” – aired with her approval, of course.
Few former secretaries of state can actually point to a single, world-historical achievement distinguishing their tenure. Clinton went far, and not just literally, toward restoring American prestige and alliances after the nadir of the Bush administration.
As for Bush’s secretaries of state, both share responsibility for bringing this country to a very low point: Colin Powell with his infamous UN speech on Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction,” a decision that he has since disowned; and Condoleezza Rice, with her “mushroom cloud” fakery and a long series of lies on the same topic. Hundreds of thousands dead, still more grievously wounded and left homeless, trillions of dollars squandered, and a violent Islamist movement rising from the ruins: Now there’s a whole series of accomplishments! Neither Powell nor Rice is likely to be remembered for much else.
By: Joe Conason, Editor in Chief, The National Memo, February 27, 2015
“Hint: Sarah Palin Has Lost Her Mind”: GOP Summit—The Good, The Bad And The Absolutely Crazy
You’re going to read a lot of analysis of this weekend’s Freedom Summit as the unofficial beginning of the Iowa caucus.
Whether that’s true depends entirely on how many of those who attended are still standing one long year from now—and how many of those who didn’t attend (Jeb Bush, Rand Paul) have campaigns that are still alive and well.
The event does serve as a gauge for a candidate’s willingness to pander, and it is the beginning of serious media scrutiny for all the candidates as 2016 candidates, not as quaint spectacles (Donald Trump, Ted Cruz) or interesting anomalies (Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina)…. or familiar former presidential candidates, who made up a non-shocking majority of the featured speakers (Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin).
What did we learn?
Palin is past her sell-by date.
It’s the unofficial policy of many serious political reporters (myself included) to not cover Palin speeches. So it’s entirely possible I missed a key stretch of her decline that would help make sense of, or have prepared me for, the word-salad-with-a-cup-of-moose-stew that she presented.
Sample passage: “Things must change for our government! It isn’t too big to fail, it’s too big to succeed! It’s too big to succeed, so we can afford no retreads or nothing will change, with the same people and same policies that got us into the status quo! Another Latin word, status quo, and it stands for, ‘Man, the middle class and everyday Americans are really gettin’ taken for a ride.’”
The speech (perhaps a generous description) went on 15 minutes past the 20 minutes allotted other speakers. And even as she ended it, one sensed less a crescendo than the specter of a gong, a hook to pull her off, or—a sincere thought I had—an ambulance to take her… somewhere.
No one else embarrassed themselves out of the race.
The event was organized by immigration hawk Rep. Steve “Cantaloupes” King (with the help of Citizens United) and many pundits fretted (or eagerly anticipated) 47-percent-style gaffes in the service of speakers trying to out-xenophobe each other. I may have missed something, but the anti-immigration rhetoric stayed on the “self-deport” side of offensive. Santorum did some under-the-breath dog whistling in reference to legal immigration, positing that the U.S. is home to more non-native citizens than ever before. He contrasted those non-native-born workers to, ahem, “American workers.” As far as I know, if you work in America, you are an “American worker.” Unless Santorum is thinking of something else.
The soft bigotry of low expectation works!
Scott Walker continues to clear the “not Tim Pawlenty” bar, but no one seems to realize how weak of a standard that is. National journalists cooed over Walker’s relatively energetic speech, apparently forgetting they were comparing it to other Walker speeches. In a similar vein, Chris Christie did not intentionally piss anyone off or bully the audience. Christie gave what seemed a lot like a national-audience speech—probably the only speaker that played it so safe.
Sen. Mike Lee gave some sensible, serious suggestions.
I may be engaging in more expectation management, but I was pleasantly surprised by Lee’s earnest and non-applause-line-ridden speech. He beseeched the audience to look for a candidate that was “positive, principled, and proven”—all while explicitly taking himself out of the running. In what could have been a direct jab at his fellow guests, he quipped, “The principled candidate is not necessarily the guy who yells ‘Freedom!’ the loudest.” He could have been quoting Elizabeth Warren when he softened typical GOP bootstrap rhetoric: “Freedom doesn’t mean ‘You’re all on your own,’” he said, “It means, ‘We’re all in it together.’” Elizabeth Warren would approve.
The GOP is going to need to figure out how to run against someone who is not Obama.
Even Lee, who gave what might be the most forward-looking speech, hung many of his arguments on the framework of undoing what Obama has done. Every other speaker followed suit, and some of the night’s biggest applause lines had to do with the same “fake scandals” that already proved insufficiently interesting to the American people: Benghazi, with a dash of IRS. They speak of repealing Obamacare with the zest of people who think of the House’s own fifty-plus attempts as mere warm-ups. Even their foreign policy script has Obama and the specter of American decline as its primary villains—foes that have defeated them twice before.
By: Ana Marie Cox, The Daily Beast, January 25, 2015
“Falling Off A Right-Wing Cliff”: Mike Huckabee Threatens GOP Over Marriage
The right wasn’t pleased when the Supreme Court indirectly cleared the way for marriage equality in several states this week, but some conservatives took the news worse than others. For example, take Fox News’ Mike Huckabee, a former preacher, governor, and presidential candidate.
Huckabee declared this week that any Supreme Court decision is just an “opinion” until Congress passes “enabling legislation” signed by the president. High court rulings, he added, are “not the ‘law of the land’ as is often heralded.”
None of this is even remotely accurate, but the comments were the latest evidence of Huckabee falling off a right-wing cliff. The Republican also said this week that Americans should doubt U.S. officials giving the public information about Ebola because of Benghazi.
And in case that weren’t quite enough, Huckabee also this week threatened to leave the Republican Party for being insufficiently anti-gay.
One guest on the program was Mike Huckabee, who began his interview by threatening to leave the Republican Party if the GOP does not take a stand against the Supreme Court’s decision yesterday not to hear appeals of lower court rulings striking down gay marriage bans in several states.
Incensed by the decision, Huckabee declared that “I am utterly exasperated with Republicans and the so-called leadership of the Republicans who have abdicated on this issue,” warning that by doing so the GOP will “guarantee they’re going to lose every election in the future.”
The former governor added that the GOP might lose “guys like me and a whole bunch of still God-fearing, Bible-believing people” unless they become more aggressive in fighting a right-wing culture war against marriage equality and reproductive rights.
Huckabee went on to say he’s prepared to “become an independent,” adding, “I’m gone…. I’m tired of this.”
At a certain level, this isn’t entirely new. Over the course of the last 20 years, I’ve lost count of how many times prominent social conservatives and leaders of the religious right movement have threatened to leave the Republican Party en masse for not going far enough in fighting the culture war. There’s never been any follow-through, at least not to any meaningful degree.
That said, Ed Kilgore raised a good point: “[I]t’s not unusual for pols associated with the Christian Right to suggest their foot soldiers are going to get discouraged at being played for suckers by the Republican Establishment, and might stay home or stray. But Huck’s making a personal statement about his own threat to book if the GOP doesn’t conspicuously get back on the traditional marriage train. And he’s saying it via the homophobic obsessives of the AFA, who can be sure to broadcast it near and far.”
Republican officials usually ignore such threats, confident that when push comes to shove, right-wing culture warriors will stay with the GOP to prevent Democratic victories.
Still, Huckabee’s ultimatum reinforces a Republican Party with an awkward dilemma. If the GOP quietly moves towards the mainstream on social issues, it alienates a significant part of the party’s base. If Republicans toe the far-right line on the culture war, the GOP will continue to shrink, pushing away younger voters and a mainstream that’s increasingly respectful of diversity.
To be sure, this has long been a challenge for Republicans, but with the party’s demographic challenges becoming more acute, and far-right voices like Huckabee’s growing louder, GOP leaders are left with no good options. Is it any wonder Republicans responded to news from the Supreme Court this week with near-total silence?
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, October 10, 2014
“Keeping Its Viewers In The Dark”: Fox News Causes America To Fixate On The Wrong Things
A grisly beheading at a food plant in Moore, Oklahoma last week reinforced some Americans’ greatest current fear: that the Islamic State terrorist group has infiltrated the U.S. Murder suspect Alton Nolen severed the head of his victim, just as an ISIS killer severed the heads of two American journalists and a British aid worker, among many other victims of the Islamist group. Coupled with Nolen’s reported ties to Islam, that was enough to warrant FBI involvement. Although the agency hasn’t yet determined Nolen’s motive, it doesn’t believe that he represents a further threat to us by ISIS or Islamists. But Fox News sees things differently.
“Sounding the jihadist alarms, Fox News and the right-wing media are eager to label the ghastly crime an act of Islamic terror,” writes Eric Boehlert on the liberal watchdog website Media Matters. “Law enforcement officials, however, aren’t in the same rush, noting that the attack came immediately after Nolen was fired and stating that they’ve yet to find a link to terrorism.”
Boehlert goes on to contrast Fox News’s coverage of the Oklahoma beheading with its coverage of an actual terrorist attack. On Sept. 16, marksman and anti-government extremist Eric Frein allegedly murdered one cop and attempted to kill another two. Hiding out in the Pocono Mountains, officials say Frein is “extremely dangerous” and perhaps in possession of an AK-47.
“We have a well-trained sniper who hates authority, hates society, hates government, and hates cops enough to plug them from ambush. He’s so lethal, so locked and loaded, that communities in the Pocono Mountains feel terrorized,” said Philadelphia columnist Dick Polman. According to the criminal complaint, Frein also collected “various information concerning foreign embassies.”
According to Boehlert’s research, Fox News only mentioned Frein and his killing spree six times in the two weeks since the shooting, and in none of those reports were the assassin’s anti-government sentiments even noted.
Ever since 2008, when Barack Obama began his first term in the White House, Fox News has been building a narrative to destroy him and his legacy. The president is routinely portrayed as having an alarmingly lax stance toward terrorism. Some conservative pundits even stoop so low as to emphasize his middle name, Hussein, to rile up Islamophobic viewers. If details of a story — or the story itself — don’t align with Fox’s ulterior purpose, they’re omitted.
Just as the most important news of the day receives front-page coverage in newspapers, it tends to be allotted the most time in newscasts, signaling its relative importance. Fox News has dedicated hours upon hours to covering the Oklahoma beheading. With such headlines as “Terror in the Heartland,” Boehlert argues, Fox politicized a tragic killing, which investigators reckon was nothing more than a disgruntled ex-employee gone berserk.
“In other words,” notes Boehlert, “on Fox News a Muslim who killed a co-worker in Oklahoma and who remains in police custody represents a much bigger story than a suspected anti-government assassin who killed a cop and remains on the run, eluding hundreds of law enforcement officials while terrorizing a Pennsylvania community.”
The Fox coverage of Nolen’s crime was only the latest in a long history of journalistic misconduct (if the word “journalistic” even applies). To tarnish Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state as well as her reputation before the next presidential election, the network aired almost 1,100 segments on Benghazi across five programs between the date the attack occurred and the formation of a select committee last May to investigate it, according to another Media Matters report. Even though no evidence of a cover-up was found over the course of 13 hearings and 50 briefings, 41 percent of Republicans continue to call Benghazi the biggest scandal in U.S. history, according to the results of a PPP poll.
Fox News had been equally powerful in convincing its viewers of the voter fraud “problem” in America, a problem “more rare than death by lightning,” a study by New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice finds. Nevertheless, Fox spearheaded the crusade for the enactment of voter ID laws – motivated, one can reasonably assume, to suppress Democratic votes.
The results of a 2013 Gallup poll showed Fox News to be the nation’s leading news source, while a 2012 survey by Fairleigh Dickinson University’s PublicMind revealed viewers of Fox News to be worse informed than even those who watch no news at all.
In April, CNN’s Peter Bergen observed that since 9/11, “extremists affiliated with a variety of far-right wing ideologies … have killed more people in the United States than have extremists motivated by al Qaeda’s ideology.” But because the top dogs at America’s No. 1 right-wing news channel are better served touting the improbable threat that ISIS poses to the homeland, the network elects to keep its viewers in the dark, distracting them from actual threats: the millions of unlicensed guns, unabated climate change, armed anti-government fanatics, and, of course, all the irrational fixations of Fox News.
By: Aimee Kuvadia, an editor and freelance journalist; The National Memo, October 2, 2014
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