Hillary Clinton is the Republicans’ white whale.
Any given day of the week, if you traipse over to the National Review, half the page seems taken up with Hillary news. Hillary embodies everything the right hates. They see her as slippery, dishonest, calculating, probably criminal and just in general completely full of you-know-what. “Hate” isn’t too strong a word – partisan Republicans do hate her. Or what they think she represents.
But one of the things that infuriates them most is their inability to lay a glove on her.
Really, it’s almost identical to the way it was with Bill Clinton. All these “scandals,” all of which – in the Republican mind – should take Clinton down for good – and they don’t. The public shrugs. And then the partisan right sees this as a failing of the public. Why don’t they see?!? Maybe if we become even more strident and partisan and repeat ourselves EVEN LOUDER, then everyone will finally see THE TRUTH!!!
Which is how you get to yesterday’s hearing on Benghazi.
Benghazi Benghazi Benghazi. There’s the GOP’s first problem, right out of the gate. The mere mention of the word “Benghazi” and people’s eyes roll back up into their heads. People just don’t care. And the people who do made up their minds long ago. And anyway, we’ve already had Republican legislators admitting the whole thing is one big partisan witch hunt.
So unless we got HUGE BOMBSHELLS yesterday, it was never going to be a game changer. And there were no huge bombshells.
What the public got, instead, was a look at Hillary Clinton’s ability to take a punch – and throw a few in the process.
Josh Marshall, who thinks the whole spectacle actually helped Hillary, got a letter from a reader that pretty much sums up what I’ve heard from Democratic partisans and even non-partisans:
Re: “It helps her”, I think I would add that it’s hard for me to imagine any of the Democrats running against Hillary pulling this off as well.
As an active Democrat who has remained, thus far, undecided, her performance here and at the debate have gone a long way toward convincing me to support Clinton instead of Sanders; even though, politically, my ideals line up more closely with Sanders’ democratic socialism than Clinton’s quasi-third way centrism.
If a Democrat wins the 2016 election, her or his main job as I see it will be defending the achievements of the Obama administration, which will surely be under even more sustained attack once he leaves office. Any major expansion to that legacy will need to be incremental given a hostile, partisan Congress that, at least in the House, is pretty much “locked in” by gerrymandering until the next redistricting cycle.
In that light, I’m increasingly leaning toward Hillary, not so much based on what she believes but on her competence, both as a public official and as a politician who knows how to punch back.
In other words, Hillary handled the hearing with aplomb, and convinced people that she can handle such things.
She’s up to the task.
That’s probably the last message the Republicans wanted to send. But it’s the whole white whale business –
Something you obsess over to the point that it nearly or completely destroys you. An obsession that becomes your ultimate goal in life; one that your life now completely encircles and defines you.
Ironically, the Republican hatred of Hillary Clinton may be the very thing that vaults her into office.
The GOP was just pwned. Expect much more of it going forward.
They just can’t help themselves.
