Hillary Clinton’s past
Absurd to have to discuss whether Hillary Clinton’s past is fair game if she runs in 2016.
The answer is “of course it is.”
And of course the press and the left knows this full well. The game being played is the usual one of setting up double standards for the different sides in terms of what’s allowed and what’s criticized. Part of this game is the simultaneous lauding of a Democratic member of a favored victim group (in this case, women) as strong and yet at the same time in need of special protection because of his/her victim status.
Obama has been the template. The only difference is the victim group in question; for Obama it’s African-Americans. Any discussion of his past (or any criticism of him at all, really) is racist, just as any discussion of Hillary will be sexist.
Count on it.
And count on the rules being reversed for Republican women and Republican African-Americans.
The game being played is the usual one of setting up double standards for the different sides in terms of what’s allowed and what’s criticized.
The only way to win this game is to refuse to play. I have long since decided that Alinsky’s rules for radicals is right up my alley. Oh sure, I have to swallow my self-respect to be that dishonest, but since my lefty friends don’t seem to have any -they never hesitate to use said rules- I’ve decided to play the game on their terms. Oddly, they don’t seem to like when I call them racist/white supremacists (the KKK was a Democrat organization) or anti-Semites (the list of Democrats/lefties who are ardently so is long). I also ask them why they hate women so much, while pointing out their support of Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy. To put it bluntly, this has led to much butthurt and yelling, to which I respond even more pointedly.
The Clinton/Obama primary was a no lose proposition for the Democrats. If Hillary won, all criticism could be denounced as sexist. Since Barry won, well, we know how criticism of him is treated. I will admit that not caring at all what most people think gives me the freedom to say whatever I want to. In the past, I’ve tried to play nice and have gotten punched in the face for my troubles. I’ve decided that donning spiked brass knuckles and retaliating in kind is more my cup of tea.
Neo,
I agree. I would add that a great part of the problem in playing this game is that the fact that the conservative-traditionalist opposition honors it. Instead of simply ignoring such sexist/racist criticism, people respond defensively by trying to demonstrate that they are not sexist/racist. In doing so, IMO they actually validate the credibility of the left’s double standard.
One would think that by now the right would allow such baseless criticisms to run like water of of a duck’s back, but no, they feel compelled to answer the charges with reason and facts that are ignored and disavowed by the left anyway.
IMO the right will only begin to make headway when we consistently attack the fundamental false premise of every leftist argument; i.e., that the left believes it is morally, socially and culturally superior to any faction that disagrees with it.
I was watching this false premise at play this morning. The discussion was the failed UAW vote in Tennessee. Bob Beckel was getting visibly annoyed that his premise of racism underlying the loss was not accepted by Andrea Tantaros. “Why do you people think you need evidence?” I heard him say. Of course, when one knows, as Bob does, that his world view is correct and superior, why in the world would anyone need evidence?
The argument is not that there is or is not evidence of racism; the argument is that Bob’s world view and fundamental perception is flawed from the outset.
Physics geek,
“The only way to win this game is to refuse to play.”
“I will admit that not caring at all what most people think gives me the freedom to say whatever I want to.”
I see we are on the same page.
I think that, for the same reason Americans perhaps don’t want to talk about Hillary’s past, they perhaps don’t want her to be president, either. The idea of having to replay memories of Whitewater, Webb Hubbell, Vince Foster, Travelgate, stock futures, Gennifer Flowers, Lewinsky — all of that stuff — is reason enough to vote for someone else.
Seriously, Hillary, just get out already. We’ve had more than enough of the Clintons for a lifetime.
I guess that should be CATTLE futures, but whatever.
Corad,
the only way Hillary will withdraw is if she knows she can’t win, and the only way she’ll know she can’t win is if the charge that “all criticism is sexist” begins to fall on deaf ears.
This is why, IMO, what Rand Paul is doing is very important. He’s drawing out the sexist argument early on so that by the time of the 2016 primaries, it may well fall on deaf ears. How many people today still take the racist charge of criticism against Obama seriously? Yes it’s still being leveled, but with each racist charge against ever more superficial distractions it reveals itself as a meaningless repetitive charge without substance. They’re shooting blanks and just can’t stop.
I think that our potential candidates should stick to current issues, but everyone else can say whatever they want. I would like to find a really good interviewer or opponent bring up her experience in devising a health care plan that no one wanted and then ask what she thinks Obama did wrong and how would she fix the GD mess. Make her choose between fixing things and covering for the incompetent Won. Any ways she answers, she turns off some of her base.
Opponents could also ask her about the success of the reset button.
they perhaps don’t want her to be president, either.
I beg to differ. There is a large number of people who will trumpet her non-existent resume and support of her predator husband as PROOF of her qualifications to ascend the Chrysanthemum Throne. Or something like that. I’ve started to tune out leftists. More to the point, I’ve started openly mocking them and their nonsense.
Oh, and I find it funny that those who would suggest that what happened 20 years ago is off limits had no problems digging up stuff from Romney’s teenage years. Okay, maybe pathetic, hypocritical and disgusting instead of funny, but my point stands.
physics geek – Have you read Rules for Radical Conservatives by David Kahane? I downloaded a Kindle sample and I’ve only read a few pages so far, but I intend to buy it. I work with an office full of liberals and I’ve started saying, “You don’t really believe that do you?” or “We both know that’s not true, right?” It works! I used to think it was beneath us, but it’s at the point where we either fight to win or die.
Physics geek,
but as you (and I) point out above, such criticism (“It was okay when you did it with Romney.”) falls on deaf leftist ears. Your tactic of calling them out as white supremecists drives a stake into the heart of their very being not only because it is a moral critique, but it goes to their very raison d’etre as morally superior beings. That’s precisely why they sputter and fume so rabidly.(that’s, BTW, when you know you’ve won the argument). Don’t ever let them forget that the KKK was Dem organization, that George Wallace, Bull Connor and Lester Maddox were Democrats, that Connor, who sat on the DNC, set party policies and that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican who freed the slaves.
Kathleen Willey’s upcoming testimony that Hillary spearheaded (or at least enabled) the attacks against Bill’s female critics (Willey, Paula Jones, etc.) does the same thing for the sexism argument. It shows Hillary, not as a flexible politician, but as an opportunist willing be a misogynist and subvert one of the fundamental principles of her political being when it personally and politically favors her.
They say that the love of money is the root of all evil—so, too, the love of power for its own sake.
LisaM,
“I started saying, ‘You don’t really believe that do you?’ or ‘We both know that’s not true, right?’ It works!
Because the left’s false premise is a house of cards—just the slightest breeze will make it collapse.
Likewise, a house of cards in Kevin Williamson’s article yesterday:
the link:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/371271/golden-gated-communities-kevin-d-williamson#!
The Left is an authoritarian society. It’s meaningless to argue with the cogs and gears. You need to deal with the boss. Do you complain to the waitress about the restaurant’s horrible policies and practices? Or do you say, “get the boss, I want to talk to him”?
The principle works the same with the Left. Why settle with talking to their tools and zombies? What is that going to get you? They only say what they were told to say to you. You’re not dealing with their Primary Center of control there.
Hillary cannot do any wrong, now, in the past, or in the future. Any leftist can do nearly anything, as long as they allow women to kill their unborn babies. See Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy for examples.
I have yet to tire of this Richard Fernandez quote re political correctness:
I’m think expat’s right– that “potential candidates should stick to current issues”. Concentrate on her failed health care scheme and her tenure as secretary of state as signs of her incompetence, or worse, as in the case of Benghazi.
Going after her because of her association with Bill, I fear, will only make her sympathetic. She, after all, was the wronged spouse, and that resonates with most women, I think.
I also question just how many of those not in their mature years in the 1990s will really want to wade into byzantine stuff like the Whitewater investigation, etc.
After the way the MSM and the Democrats treated Palin? There are no rules, no lectures on decency after that feeding frenzy.
As with past campaigns, this is about character. Hillary’s behavior as a first lady is fair game.
She should feel lucky no one is demanding her OB-GYN records. *shudders*
Just remembered: Hillary was caught with having FBI files on political enemies in their WH residence.
If she or the Democrats had any shame they would know how rich it is to expect others to respect her privacy.
If there were any justice in the world, Hillary would have every square inch of her life and political career thoroughly examined under a microscope, dissected, and her various sleazy actions, statements, crooked deals, lies, evasions, instances of incompetence, and sins over the last couple of decades pinpointed and shouted to the roof tops–over and over again, and non-stop; forming a huge “bill of indictment.”
However, it seems to me that to do so–well deserved and satisfying as it might be–would dilute the attack against her, would invite “defeat in detail,” as energy that should be focused like a big, huge high-pressure fire hose on her current record and on just a few very carefully selected examples of her current actions, mistakes, and evasions, would be split into a number of different attacks, like all that water and pressure being split among and fed into a dozen or more garden houses, each one targeted at a worthwhile target all right, but each garden hose only able to deliver a relative trickle of water as compared to that fire hose.
Moreover, attacks spread out and aimed at such a wide range of targets makes it extremely easy to get tangled up in, entrapped, and to dissipate your energy in fighting all sorts of battles about a hundred different controversies and aspects of each and every one of Hilary’s past actions and involvements over the last few decades–Whitewater, Vince Foster, The White House Travel Office, Juanita Broaderick, Saul Alinsky, etc. etc.
Better to focus all of the attack on a few of her key present day actions and statements.
I doubt many people will trust a Centralized Republican High Command to coordinate the offensive fire.
In such a scenario, firing at will is a lot better than bad tactical orders.
IMO republicans should primarily stay focused on issues while reminding voters of HRC’s actual record. When ‘war on women’ is mentioned they need to call BS.
The only discussion of Hillary that will be allowed is that which is good and will help her.
In other words – fiction!
Going after her because of her association with Bill, I fear, will only make her sympathetic. She, after all, was the wronged spouse, and that resonates with most women, I think.
Feminism brainwashed women into thinking that “standing by your man” when the sh hits the fan, was the patriarchy controlling women.
The problem is the hypocrisy where the slave masters always “stand by their man” because they consider it in their self interest, but when it comes to accusations of rape between two lovers, the woman is never recommended to believe in her man or to communicate, but to trust in the State to determine who is guilty. Definitions of rape has been modified to include inappropriate touching, bad dreams, and consensual sex with regret now.
The perfect political spot should show Hillary’s 2008 campaign ad where she was portrayed as the right person to answer the 3 A.M. phone call to the Whitehouse. Then the Benghazi hearing response of “what difference does it make” should follow. In one minute it should be game, set, and match. No need to go back to history that most people can no longer recall.
I would suggest we raise the issue this way: Is the enabler of a sexual predator a proper candidate for President. If they want to argue that Bill isn’t a sexual predator, fine. If they want to argue she’s not an enabler, fine. Neither is where liberals want to be.
Need to hammer her relentlessly on Bengazhi and Obamacara.
I saw the movie “Lone Survivor.” I can’t imagine anyone who saw that movie voting for her.
We don’t abandon our people on the battlefield. Ever.
I agree that Republican candidates should be focusing more on her record, but that doesn’t mean that other sources shouldn’t be bringing up all of the other stuff, too (such as Rand Paul calling out Bill’s personal war on women).
It may make Hillary look sympathetic, but it will also remind people of what a circus of dysfunction the Clintons were. Do we really want to be inviting Bill back into the White House, especially while his wife is preoccupied?
Fascinating thread raising many issues.
1) Keeping the peace among family, friends and co-workers is the number one priority for reasons of personal serenity and well-being.
1a) However, as a consequence informed non-Leftists have a unique perspective on how Leftists think. For reasons of prudence, we shut up. They feel no such constraints, even when they know you disagree. It is in precisely their unappealing lack of graciousness we (non-Leftists) can see the religious nature at work in its manifold prejudices and small-mindedness. Folks who are otherwise witty, warm and well-meaning, become – – actually, are – – petty and narcissistic based upon the easiest thing in the world, agreeing with the sole dominant cultural pov.
1b) They do not know how ugly they look, because we do not have books, movies, tv shows portraying them relentlessly for who they really are, as opposed to the relentless baseless caricatures relentlessly portraying who we are supposed to be.
2) Nonetheless, on the rare occasions when I feel I can’t stand it any longer, I do immediately and consistently refer to whatever position they are taking as a religious position, and this does bother them to no end. In effect, I am just doing what they are doing, name-calling, but it is an ironic and entirely justified name-calling, especially because they cannot back up their position, ever, and when called out to explain what they mean, they cannot.
2a) Understand, I am an agnostic, I do not believe humans have enough information to answer a lot of fundamental questions. This is my faith, “self-evident” to me: that we do not know a lot, and what we know can only take us so far, that it is highly difficult to understand what is going on in our own lives where we have much more information, than we can know about the whole of human existence and the nature of the universe, which, to my eyes, starts out being clouded with paradox, and with each discovery only more questions are uncovered, an ever-receding and expanding horizon of uncertainty.
2a) But when I do (rarely) feel compelled to challenge Leftist thinking, I might start with evolution. I have no personal interest one way or the other in evolution (other than how it is used to batter people over the head) but I have never seen a satisfactory explanation of why I should believe in evolution. Now, ask a Leftist to explain why evolution (a central tenet of their religion) is true, and you will not get a satisfactory explanation. It becomes evident that evolution is one of those “scientific” facts which they personally take on faith. Don’t get me wrong, it would not bother me in the slightest if someone could do it. It is simply that for Leftists this is an article of belief. You do not even have to get into the subject of DNA to exhaust their “factual” knowledge.
2b) So too with “global warming.” I call it a religious belief in those rare instances where I am not politely ignoring the subject. Ask for the proof, and you will get polar bears and consensus, iow religious belief.
2c) My favorite is racism and the history of the Democrat party, the party which has always resorted to hatred and division, always. On the really rare, rare moments when I cannot be smilingly nice, I call these beliefs about racism “religious” beliefs. Most Leftists, secure in their faith, even highly intelligent and well-informed Leftists, are very shallow in their knowledge of race relations in this country, or antisemitism, or the centuries’ long exploitation of hatred and division by the Democrat party. (BTW, it is amazing to me that non-Leftist sites do not make reference to the history of the Democrat party every day).
3) Leftists do not think about cost/benefit, unintended consequences, human nature and the value of modesty in all things. Consequently, their view of government is magical thinking. So (rarely) I will confront them about their “religious” belief in government. The fundamental issue underlying any person’s political belief is the role of government, but Leftists do not realize that. They think it is about the purity of one’s intentions and hopes. God bless them, one day they may come to realize that no one is in favor of breast cancer or depriving children of (whatever).
4) But primarily, as posters have already stated, I will (rarely) point out the hypocrisy of the Leftist religious beliefs, and how they are really sinners of the worst sort. This is easy to do. No Leftist lives a life as if what they believe was as true or as critical as they purport. Some Christians do that, it is helpful to point out. It also demonstrates that they really do not believe what they say they believe.
Alas, I hope I am wrong, but no amount of confrontation or proselytizing will make much difference in the short run. For those who lived the 60’s up close and personal in places where the present Hell was born, it is apparent that we are only at the end of the beginning.
Maybe a Great Leader will emerge. I hope so. In the meanwhile, non-Leftists have to do what they can to hold on. And in the long run we need to be establishing those cultural venues which appeal to the folks whose active minds ultimately influence culture.
Tonowanda,
“no amount of confrontation or proselytizing will make much difference in the short run. ”
I don’t agree with that perception. Certainly my (or your) confronting a leftist one evening over a beer is not going to alter the Gramscian march, but it is one small battle won which, in some small way, slows down that march. It is important for us to confront leftists and pushback on this personal scale. It calls into question their belief that they are so morally and culturally superior to anyone who disagrees with them. For many of them it’s the first time they’ve ever had to deal with that possibility. That is the first crack in their wall and it oftentimes occurs without them even realizing it.
We just never know when and with whom that initial crack will lead to private reflection and perhaps, someday, a realization. Then WHAM! Suddenly you have a new neo-neocon.
The primary reason people have failed to convince people is that they think they are trying to convince atheists. Their targets are religious fanatics, not atheists.
Thus by using the wrong tools and target data, they fail. And fail. And fail. The ancient theologians knew that converting someone to a different faith only required a few things, some more difficult than others.
1. Prove your God is stronger and better than their God.
2. Prove that as a follower of your religion, you are better and stronger than those who do not follow that religion.
3. Debate logick with someone that understands logick.
Most people choose 3. But logick doesn’t work with fanatics, btw. They think they are wearing down the members of the enemy church over time. That’s not what happens. When a fanatic gets hit by a logick attack, if they do not begin to doubt their faith, their faith’s strength is reinforced. Attacking their faith via logick actually makes them stronger, not weaker.
Ymarsaker,
I agree that most people seem to gravitate to #3 which the left summarily dismisses. that is why I keep harping ont he fact that the target must be not their illogic (what they know is wrong) but their fundamental belief (they are morally and culturally superior). This is why they fume when confronted with the idea that they are racist white supremicists (see physics geek above), it erodes the basic tenet of their belief.
it erodes the basic tenet of their belief.
It’s also an attack they were never programmed or trained to resist. The Left gives the zombies their marching orders, which are often offense in nature. Few zombies are ever given training in how to resist attacks on par with the racist white supremacist charge.
Generally Leftists and Obama voters will start shutting up when they get to an area they were not trained and conditioned to propagandize on. A lot of people have seen this. But in a few weeks or years, once they get the new orders to march on a new target, the Leftist cannonfodder starts up their talk once again.
Two recent examples are the IRS and Benghazi. Like most large organizations, the Left are very inflexible and hard to get moving. Once they get moving, their inertial makes them into a behemoth, extremely difficult to stop using defensive measures.
When a Leftist goes speechless or they say “I don’t want to talk about this any more”, that’s generally taken in a respectful way by others. That’s why things fail. When a Leftist stops talking and tries to avoid a subject, that is because they have started to DOUBT. Give them enough time and they will then find some other excuse or ratonalization form their Slave Masters at the Leftist top. They’ll come back talking about Sarah Palin is this, Benghazi was that, the IRS targeted Left wing groups too. That kind of BullS.
It’s the common decency of non Leftists that allow Leftists to grow and prosper. Because the hammer, stake, and blade is not punched through once the armor is penetrated. Once the Left’s defenses are down, most of us will leave them alone.
“It’s the common decency of non Leftists that allow Leftists to grow and prosper. Because the hammer, stake, and blade is not punched through once the armor is penetrated. ”
I would agree with that. Perhaps it is because the non-left still wants to see the opposition as well-intentioned but misguided. Think, most recently, of Bill O’Reilly’s comments that “Obama’s heart is in the right place,” while he ignores the fact that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
I think that a bit of ridicule might also be helpful. For instance juxtaposing Hillary’s delivery of the reset button with pictures of the post-red line Putin helping Assad in Syria and with the grotesque pictures coming out of Kiev. Make her defend the success of that stupid button. Make her defend the Dems’ incompetence WRT Obamacare. Others, especially those affected by her past, can bring this up. But the most serious message should be her incompetence. She can’t say her ideas worked, but she can say Obama screwed them up. Then let the Obama worshippers go at her.
Perhaps it is because the non-left still wants to see the opposition as well-intentioned but misguided.
Which is why in 2012-13 I kept writing about the necessity of hate here, vis a vis the resources required to wage war.
People cannot fight if they lack the motivation. Hate is the natural human emotion crafted through generations, to keep families alive in war against enemies.
If people do not accept the true nature of the Left, they will negotiate with the Left. The consequences, though, will be similar to Chamberlain’s result. It’ll look good, for awhile. Then it’ll collapse. Time, once wasted, cannot be recovered. I don’t care who a mortal thinks they are. They cannot reverse time, which is why wasting time is worse than wasting money.
Bill Clinton’s sexual predator past and Hillary’s serial enabling are fair game for this reason: Bill Clinton would be the first First husband.
Does anyone really believe that he will spend his second residency in the White House down in the bowling alley or watching ‘House of Cards’ upstairs in the official residence?
These two are trailer trash grifters, and particularly mean ones at that.
Exactly how these malignant sociopaths came to be the darlings global ruling class remains one of life’s great mysteries.