“Blinded By Hate”: Hillary Clinton’s Enemies Can’t See Straight
Rand Paul, who is weirdly a potentially serious contender for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, got asked on Meet the Press this past Sunday about a comment his wife had made about Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. His answer was revealing, I think, of a mindset Republicans are going to struggle with mightily should Hillary Clinton run for president. I bring this up not because I think Paul’s comments are all that important in and of themselves, and not because Republicans are likely to spend a good deal of time talking about Monica Lewinsky come 2016. But there’s an impulse when it comes to Hillary Clinton that presents a real danger for Republicans. There are so many things they hate about her and her husband that they barely know where to start. And that hatred could well be their undoing.
If you heard “Rand Paul attacked Hillary Clinton over Monica Lewinsky,” you’ve been slightly misled. First of all, it was David Gregory who brought it up (here’s the transcript), and second, you can see in Paul’s answer the conflict between his rational brain, which says, “This is not what we should be talking about,” and his lizard brain, which says, “Grrr! Clinton!” A couple of times he tries to say that the issue is one for Bill Clinton’s “place in history,” but he can’t stop himself from trying to make the case that Democrats are hypocrites because they criticize Republicans for waging a “war on women,” when Bill Clinton had an affair with an intern fifteen years ago.
Even after all this time, and after the Clinton impeachment turned out to be such a disaster for them, so many conservatives still can’t wrap their heads around the idea that other Americans don’t think about that episode in the same way they do. For them, it’s a tale of crime and injustice, the injustice being the fact that Bill Clinton got away with it. It goes right to the heart of what they hated so much about him. It wasn’t that they had policy differences with him, though they did. What angered them so much about Bill Clinton was that he was better at politics than they were. He beat them again and again for so many years, and nothing embodies their frustration over those defeats more than the Lewinsky scandal. For god’s sake, they cry, the guy was caught diddling a twenty-something intern in the White House, and he still managed to wiggle his way out of it!
So when Rand Paul or any other conservative hears the name Lewinsky, the immediate emotional reaction he has is one of anger, frustration, and contempt for the Clintons. But most Americans don’t have the same reaction. First of all, they aren’t that angry about it anymore. It was a decade and a half ago. And second, their memories of the whole sordid affair are as much about Republicans going too far—an impeachment that never should have happened, Ken Starr’s salacious and obsessive pursuit of Clinton, an opposition party that grew more desperate and deranged the clearer it became that they’d never take down their white whale—as they are about the President’s misdeeds.
As for Hillary, well as far as they’re concerned she’s complicit in everything Bill did, and then you can add to that the contempt they have for her as a powerful woman. You just cannot overestimate the degree to which Hillary Clinton brings out the ugliest misogynistic feelings and sexual insecurities in so many people (not all of them conservatives, I would add). This is something I’ve written about before, and I’m sure I’ll be writing about it again, because it’s going to be a central part of any campaign in which she’s involved.
There are few things more fundamental to smart political strategy than the understanding that other people may not share your beliefs, and may not have the same emotional reactions you do to certain people and events. That understanding is what allows you to make thoughtful decisions about how to persuade the number of people you need to achieve your political goals, whether it’s passing a piece of legislation or winning an election. This is something Republicans often struggle with, but when it comes to the Clintons, they’re absolutely blinded by hate. To take just one example, if Hillary runs, we’re going to be hearing a lot about Benghazi, because Republicans are not only sure she did something scandalous, they’re also sure that if they just hammer away at it long enough, everybody else will become convinced, too. But just like with Bill’s impeachment, exactly the opposite is likely to happen: the more they talk about it, the more voters will become convinced that they’ve taken leave of their senses.
And that, more than anything else, may be what gives Hillary Clinton such a good chance of winning in 2016. When they’re looking at her, her opponents just can’t see straight.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, January 28, 2014
“It’s About The Guy In The White House”: The GOP Hypocrisy On Privacy And The Pill
I’m sure you chuckled at this weekend development as much as I did: At its winter meeting, the Republican National Committee, , passed a resolution condemning the NSA’s data-mining policy. The language about “unwarranted” government surveillance being an “intrusion on basic human rights” passed by voice vote, with only a few dissenters.
This is being read in the media as evidence for the party’s continuing turn away from war-mongery, Ari Fleischer-style, “watch what you say and do” Big Brotherism and toward a Pauline (as in Rand) libertarianism. And I wouldn’t deny that there’s something to that. The libertarian streak is very in vogue on the right, and neocons can’t seem to get Americans agitated about anything.
But let’s not kid ourselves. The passage of this resolution is mostly about the guy in the White House. If you want to try to tell me this was an act of principle by the RNC, then put Mitt Romney in the White House for a moment. Do you think the RNC would have considered such a resolution? Please. Reince Priebus would have had a stroke. He’d have quashed it in minutes. But with Barack Obama in the White House, the rules are different. The RNC passed this resolution to kick a little extra sand in Obama’s face.
This isn’t new of course, this rancid hypocritical sand-kicking, but it keeps getting worse, more comically transparent and more brazen. You may have read last week, for example, after Mike Huckabee’s birth-control throw down, that back in 2005 when he was Arkansas governor, Huckabee approved legislation requiring health-insurance plans in the state to cover contraceptive pills and devices. In fact, according to The Arkansas Times, Huckabee’s exemption for religious employers and organizations was narrower than the exemption in Obamacare.
So how did this policy go from being something a Southern Baptist fundamentalist could endorse to something that’s fodder for the next front in the culture war? What’s changed? Well, let’s see. It’s not that government is forcing insurers to pay for contraception. That’s what Huckabee approved in 2005. It’s not that contraception is different. True, we’ve had controversies in the past year about the age at which girls could have legal access to emergency contraceptive pills (ECPs), but that has nothing to do with “Uncle Sugar” providing women with birth control, which was the crux of Huckabee’s lament. And besides that, it’s not as if ECPs [what does that stand for?] themselves are new—they’ve been legal for 15 years. It was George W. Bush’s FDA that changed ECPs from prescription-only to over-the-counter (for adult women), back in 2006.
No, those things aren’t very different. What’s different is who’s in the White House. What’s an acknowledgement of modern reality when a Republican is president becomes, with Obama as president, another manifestation of how he’s taking America straight to hell. If you believe the president is the Manchurian Candidate, acts that were once benign or ignorable take on a new and more sinister coloration.
Do liberals do this too in reverse? Sure, to some extent. But on the topic of the NSA and data mining, you certainly can’t say that liberals and Democrats have been silent. Many have been fierce critics of the administration, far more so than conservatives and Republicans, in fact. To the extent that Obama is changing his policies in these realms, it’s because of pressure from the left, not the right.
But now the GOP wants a piece of this action. I’m sure that to some extent the sentiment among the RNC members—national committee-people from across the country, many of them local politicos, few or none of them members of the Beltway foreign-policy establishment—is genuine. Most people don’t like the idea that the government has a log of their phone calls. It’s not exactly hard to get a bunch of conservative activists to cast a voice-vote against the government and against anything Obama is doing.
But proof of libertarian dominance in the GOP? Don’t buy it. If the Republicans nominate Rand Paul, then sure, they’ll keep sallying forth down the libertarian alley. But if they nominate a more conventional Republican who has ties to the neoconservative establishment, the delegates stand up at the 2016 convention and cheer their heads off every time that nominee talks about the homeland. And should that person become president, and do the same things Obama has done and worse…well, I wouldn’t be looking for any censorious RNC resolutions if I were you.
In the meantime, the thing to keep looking for is Republicans having no memory of LB09—Life Before 2009. It makes no difference what position the party or any individual Republican took before January 20 of that year. All that matters from their way of seeing things is that on January 20 of that year, everything changed. That’s the governing emotional reality of the GOP opposition, and it will remain so until the day the black guy leaves the White House.
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, January 27, 2014
“Sending A Strong Message”: Oklahoma Judge Permanently Strikes Down State Restrictions On Emergency Contraception
An Oklahoma district court judge ruled late Wednesday to permanently strike down an unconstitutional state law restricting women and girls’ access to emergency contraception. Judge Lisa Davis found that the law violated the state’s “single-subject rule,” which prohibits legislators from addressing unrelated issues in one law.
Oklahoma politicians added a provision restricting women and girls’ access to a law focused on regulating health insurance benefit forms. The measure required women to provide proof of age in order to obtain emergency contraception, and required anyone under the age of 17 to have a prescription to access emergency contraception. Prior to the ruling striking down the measure, Oklahoma was one of nine states with laws restricting women’s access to Plan B One-Step and other generic emergency contraceptives.
“This unconstitutional provision was nothing more than an attempt by hostile politicians to stand in the way of science and cast aside their state’s constitution to block women’s access to safe and effective birth control,” said David Brown, staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, the group behind the legal challenge.
“We hope the court’s ruling sends yet another strong message to politicians in Oklahoma that these underhanded tactics are as unconstitutional and deceptive as they are harmful to women in their state.”
In November, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear Oklahoma’s appeal seeking to reinstate its law banning medication abortions, which was also found to be unconstitutional by a lower court.
By: Katie McDonough, Salon, January 24, 2014
“Nothing New Here”: Republicans Meet, But Losing Image Remains
After three days of winter meetings, it’s clear the Republican National Committee has made little progress in rebranding a party that has lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections.
A quick look at the media coverage confirms the party is still struggling:
Politico: “After the 2012 election, establishment Republicans promised things would be different next time. They’d stop turning off women. They’d tamp down on rogue outside groups. And they’d get the tea party movement in line. But now that 2014 is here, those goals seem as elusive as ever and even insiders admit the party’s got a long way to go — if it really wants to change.”
Reuters: “At the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting this week in Washington, it was clear the panic that hit the party after the 2012 elections has subsided, although polls indicate that efforts to make the party more attractive to single women, minorities and gays, groups that favor Democrats by big numbers, have not made any headway.”
Associated Press: “Yet, awkward comments about contraception and women’s reproductive systems and chatter over Michigan committeeman Dave Agema’s derogatory comments about gays and Muslims obscured the party’s attempt to feature its efforts at last week’s meeting.”
In fact, as National Public Radio notes, the GOP’s rebranding effort “was mostly in the background this year.” Instead, the party focused on procedural changes to help them with the next presidential election.
The one victory Republicans seemingly had was tightening the presidential primary process in an attempt to get an electable nominee early enough in the process that he or she can wage an effective general election campaign.
But political scientist Josh Putnam says most of the analysis of these changes so far is “overstating the changes the Republicans put in place this week.”
He warns: “Let’s all be careful about what has changed with these rules and what it may or may not mean for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination race.”
By: Taegan Goddard, The Cloakroom, The Week, January 25, 2014
“What Was Huckabee Talking About?”: I Can Hardly Believe That I Share The Same Country With The Man
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus invited former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee to be the keynote speaker at the RNC’s winter meeting, but it appears that he regrets that decision:
Priebus responded to Huckabee’s comments, telling the Washington Post, “I don’t know what he was talking about. Sort of a goofy way of using some phrases. Not the way I would have phrased it.”
I don’t know what Mike Huckabee was talking about, either. When he was serving as governor, Huckabee signed a law mandating that health insurance plans provide contraceptive coverage, and he made no exceptions for religious institutions. And, despite the fact that his hero Jesus was quite clear that he had nothing but the harshest contempt for hypocrites, Huckabee is now behaving as if contraceptive coverage in health care plans is some kind of violation of people’s religious rights.
His actual comments were more than ‘goofy.’ They were nonsensical. I don’t know if he asks his nieces to refer to him as ‘Uncle Sugar,’ but I certainly hope not. The main thing is that he wants us to have a national discussion about contraception.
“If the Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government, then so be it. Let us take that discussion all across America.”
I’m not sure that anyone knows quite what the hell that comment is supposed to mean. He later explained that “My point was to point out that Dems have put a laser-like focus on government funded birth control and given it more attention than cancer drugs.”
Does anyone think Huckabee’s point was that Democrats are not highlighting enough how ObamaCare is giving people access to life-saving cancer drugs?
Anyone?
I’ve tried to decipher Huckabee’s meaning and I’ve read other people’s attempts to explain his comments, but I think I’ll have to chalk it up to some kind of cultural misunderstanding. It’s kind of like the tension I feel between having total contempt for how Saudi Arabia treats women and religious freedom and my tolerance for different cultures having different laws and beliefs. Maybe your typical Saudi understands what Huckabee was trying to say, but I certainly don’t. I can hardly believe that I share the same country with the man.
As best as I can tell, he was saying that Republicans have enough respect for women to believe that they can remain chaste until marriage, as they should. Maybe ObamaCare should cover the expense of burkas. Would Huckabee support that?
By: Martin Longman, Washington Monthly Political Animal, January 25, 2014
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