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   From: scooter@yahoo.com   
      
   Hillary derangement syndrome: Back to the future   
      
   What a belly laugh it was yesterday when Benghazi-hunter Darrell Issa   
   insisted on Meet the Press that “Hillary Clinton’s not a target.”   
   Apparently his Republican brethren haven’t received his memo.   
   On Face the Nation, Senator Kelly Ayotte (who aspires to be somewhere on   
   the 2016 GOP ticket) was busy targeting Hillary: “Obviously she was the   
   decision maker at the State Department.” Out in Iowa, Senator Rand Paul   
   (who aspires to be somewhere on the 2016 ticket) told a group of partisans   
   on Friday that Hillary’s behavior on Benghazi was “inexcusable” and should   
   “preclude her from holding higher office.” And on TV yesterday, Senator   
   John McCain (who put Sarah Palin on the 2008 ticket) offered this gem of   
   Hillary innuendo: “She had to have been in the loop some way. But we don’t   
   know for sure.”   
   And then it occurred to me: The spring of 2013 is the spring of 2005 all   
   over again.   
   I doubt this has occurred to you; in kinetic contemporary politics, an   
   eight-year span is akin to a millenium. But the parallels are nonetheless   
   striking. Back in May ’05, Republicans were very worried about the ’08   
   election; most notably, they were very worried about Hillary, who had   
   raised her favorability rating by becoming an effective and respected U.S.   
   senator. So they endeavored to re-slime her, to ramp up her negatives as   
   they had done during the ’90s.   
   As Mike Krempasky, a veteran conservative organizer, told me that spring,   
   “The machine is starting to gear up.” The conservative closed-loop echo   
   chamber got busy promoting a new anti-Hillary book (perversely entitled   
   The Truth About Hillary) which alleged that she was a “dupicitious”   
   “ruthless” manipulator who was “widely rumored” to be a lesbian, and whose   
   daughter was allegedly conceived during an act of rape.   
   Granted, some prominent conservatives disputed the allegations. Craig   
   Shirley, who had worked with anti-Hillary publishers during the ’90s, told   
   me, “This stuff is disgusting. It makes your skin crawl. It could backfire   
   and make Hillary a more sympathetic figure.” And Krempasky said that the   
   book “makes our politics look like The Jerry Springer Show.” But the usual   
   suspects – Drudge Report, NewsMax, Fox News, Limbaugh – went to work on   
   Hillary anyway. As ex-GOP congressman John Boutillier, proprietor of an   
   anti-Hillary website, told me at the time, “The new media is where it’s   
   at. That’s where the action.” And 2008 was only three years away.   
   Today, it’s back to the future. It’s 2013, the next election is only three   
   years away, and Republicans are not happy that Hillary has raised her   
   favorability rating by serving as an effective and respected Secretary of   
   State. Hence, the anti-Hillary reboot. Benghazi seemed like a gift.   
   They’ve already tried in vain to prove that she personally exposed the   
   Benghazi compound to repeated hostile attacks, and that she personally   
   refused to send in the U.S. military; ex-Defense Secretary Robert Gates,   
   who served two Republican presidents, said on TV yesterday that Hillary   
   obsessives seem to have “a cartoonish impression of military   
   capabilities.” So now they’ve shifted tactics. Now they’re claiming –   
   without any evidence – that she orchestrated a cover-up about those   
   September talking points.   
   It’s absolutely true that the Obama administration finessed and tweaked   
   and revised and edited its draft statements, removing references to al   
   Qaeda and other terrorist groups; an ABC News story, posted last Friday,   
   detailed the changes. And it’s absolutely true that Obama’s press   
   secretary misled reporters in November when he said that the White House   
   and State Department had adjusted only one word (“changing the word   
   ‘consulate’ to ‘diplomatic facilicity’ because ‘consulate’ was   
   inaccurate”) – when, in reality, State was far more actively involved.   
   But, alas, Hillary-haters have quickly gone to Defcon 1, claiming that she   
   personally engineered a conspiracy to conceal the truth – despite what   
   Jonathan Karl, the ABC Newsie who reported the story, has publicly stated:   
   “There’s no evidence that Hillary Clinton was aware of what was going on,   
   or in any way tried to direct what was in these talking points.”   
   No, what apparently happened was far more depressingly mundane – a brouha   
   between competing government agencies, a bureaucratic knife fight that   
   pitted the CIA against the State Department. (Vicious turf wars have raged   
   ever since the 1790s, when Cabinet members Thomas Jefferson and Alexander   
   Hamilton did battle.) In the current episode, the CIA drafted talking   
   points that seemed to blame State for not being sufficiently vigilant   
   about terrorist groups; State felt that CIA was trying to cover its own   
   ass, because, after all, Benghazi was basically a CIA outpost.   
   Has Obama made good on his promise to change Washington? No way; the   
   recent talking-point turf fight was classic Washington.   
   But for Hillary-haters to claim that she organized a plot to lie to the   
   American people…well, that’s roughly on a par with their winter hilarity   
   about how she was supposedly faking illness to avoid testifying. (She had   
   a blood clot.) Indeed, their biggest problem is that they’ve cried wolf   
   about Hillary way too many times. (The ’05 “lesbian” allegation merely   
   rebooted an old Dick Morris allegation.) They can raise money off her, and   
   Rand Paul can wow the Iowa base by maligning her, but they’ll never win   
   the American middle with back-to-the-future overreach.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)