Why Do Republicans Have Such a Hardon for Investigating the Clintons?

[Doctor Jack]

I've never seen them go after a family so aggressively as they have with the Clintons, not even Obama had to deal so many investigations and accusations. Where does this obsession with the Clintons come from?

[bemildred]

1. They beat them twice, 1992 & 1996, the Clinton's did.

Outplayed them at their own game. They hate that.

I expect the same with Obama, but the Pubbies are so disorganized, and Obama so hard to attack, it won't amount to much.

I expect the War Party will dislike Obama forever, however, like Carter.

[joshcryer]

15. This is it exactly.

Watch PBS's American Experience: Clinton. He won when by all rights he should not have even been a player. Yes, he was a practical outsider, but he managed to form the connections that made the Clintons the political behemoths that they are today.

But I really think it went national when Jerry Brown got under Bill's skin in the debates going after Hillary. He specifically called out all the local non-scandals that AK Republicans had been using for years to try to discredit the Clinton's. When that happened and Bill lost it the Republicans saw a way to really tear the Clinton's down.

And you see Bill lose it to this day whenever this crap comes up. So it's just a mind game to fuck with the Clinton's because they don't know how to handle politicians who sit down with people and discuss issues and try to get things done (for better or worse, the Clinton's will work with people; which is why it's often called cronyism; but there's absolutely nothing wrong with working with people in politics).

It's the politics of the personal. And all the attacks on Hillary Clinton are purely personal character attacks. Not policy attacks.

[bemildred]

16. Yes, they are former successful political insurgents, the Clintons.

The irony, eh?

And the Republicans and their ilk hate getting shown up in public worse than anything, it means they are losers.

At bottom that is why they hate Obama, he beat them, the black hippie beat them like a gong, twice.

[applegrove]

2. Remember when the Bush Whitehouse was afraid of more investigations

regarding 9/11 and Ken Starr publicly apologized for the whitewater investigations in the 1990s? And now Benghazi. The GOP are so full of ****.

[AgingAmerican]

5. Which is why trying to work with them is futile

They govern as sociopaths, and do not keep their word.

[applegrove]

7. Cooperation is what made the civilization great. The GOP do not cooperate.

You are right, they are acting like sociopaths.

[Ilsa]

3. I think one reason is because Hillary was our first FLOTUS with

a career outside the home in a male-dominated profession. She was an easy target because she wasn't fragile.

[BlueMTexpat]

9. She also had political

accomplishments to her credit even then, including being part of the Nixon impeachment commission, researching procedures of impeachment and the historical grounds and standards for impeachment. I don't believe that they ever forgave her that. Even in 1974, some Democratic activists were seriously considering her as a Presidential candidate and that was before she married Bill.

When she did finally marry Bill, she elected to keep her maiden name, which outraged conservatives (who are generally easily outraged over women's rights in any event), joined the Rose Law Firm and wrote several articles that made her one of the most important legal scholar-activists of the era. She was also a pro bono attorney for women's and children's concerns. President Carter appointed her as a board member of the Legal Services Corporation and she served as its first woman chair.

Too many are quick to note her board membership at Walmart. They omit her service at the LSC and her accomplishments there and also omit to state that at Walmart she was one woman among 15 men so there was only so much that she could do. Even there, however, she championed women's rights and the environment but had little success with much else. The major positive thing is that the experience gave her an unusual tutorial in the ways of American business ... and Hillary has never been a slow learner.

As someone with a liberal political background and a record of generally accomplishing her political goals (women's rape crisis centers, children's advocacy, member of the board of directors of the Legal Services Corporation, enforcement of civil rights, etc.), she epitomized everything that the right wing authoritarian autocracy hated and still hates. Once united with Bill, they truly became a FORCE that the RWAA could not effectively combat.

This is why the RWAA fight so desperately against her and hate her so much. And it is desperate hatred. But there are still too many - even here on DU - who carry the RWAA's water for them. Shameful all, IMO.

[AgingAmerican]

4. Right wingers suffer from black and white thinking

Everything is either good or evil, no shades of grey. Once they put their gunsights on someone, they forever see that person as 'evil'.

[Rex]

6. It keeps them from having to do any real work.

It would mean they would need to create policies and not just let Citibank do it.

[struggle4progress]

8. They really don't care one way or another. It's just a strategy they've used for years:

OMG Hillary is actually a brain-eating fungus! OMG Bill is actually the Boston Strangler! OMG Chelsea is actually Batboy! OMG Hillary is actually a cannibal! OMG Bill is actually Count Dracula! OMG Chelsea is actually an alien from Area 51!

when ya ain't got nuthin --- ya got nuthin t'lose

[Night Watchman]

10. Hate

In its purest form.

[C_U_L8R]

11. There's no downside for them

Republicans don't pay a cent in consequences
for their bullshit conspiracy theories and
'investigations'. And that is partly due to
fact that we Dems lets them get away with it.

[baldguy]

13. Also partly due to some Dems buying into it.

[Orrex]

14. Yes indeed. Some right here on DU, in fact...

[JHB]

12. It started as a tactic and turned into an industry

Last edited Sun Jun 14, 2020, 09:15 PM - Edit history (2)

By the 1990s the Republicans had a formula for beating old-school postwar Democrats (call them soft on defense, soft on crime, pandering to "special interests" (unions, minorities, feminists, etc.), "anti-business" ). That formula wouldn't work against Bill Clinton, "pro-business" governor from a "right to work" state who didn't follow the "big government" narrative and was willing to go against "special interests" in his own party.

The Bush campaign fought this in two ways: 1) dig up whatever dirt hey could in Arkansas and 2) forget reality and just portray him as the conservative voter's ultimate bogeyman (draft-dodgin' dope-smokin' citizenship-renouncin' Baby Boomer Hippy Bill and his feminazi "partner", Homemaker Hater Hillary). Then, in a classic case of Republican Election Delusion, they were stunned that Bush lost.

Enter Rush Limbaugh: he devoted his radio show to rallying conservatives, saying Clinton was only "technically" president because he won by a plurality, painting him as holding the office of the president illegitimately. So, for the red-meat crowd, anything to remove the pretender from office was legitimate. For the more strategically-minded conservatives, a constant stream of investigations and scandals would be a drag on any Clinton attempt to revisit old Reagan-Bush scandals now that the investigatees no longer in in a position to stall investigators. And it would hamper attempts to reverse some key Reagan-Bush policies.

Add to the mix a media eager to show that it didn't have a "liberal bias" (one news magazine had a "Clinton suck-up watch" to chide any coverage that was seen as too favorable), and who grew up on how Watergate coverage created superstar journalists -- and were eager to get their turn.

So you had a conservative public stoked to believe absolutely anything about the Clintons (and eager to get the juicy details about their perfidy), a growing conservative media counterculture that was willing to supply them with "what's REALLY going on," a political establishment that saw advantage (and, eventually, possible revenge for Watergate) in nonstop attacks and a media that saw a potential career jackpot in becoming the new Woodward and Bernstein. And after the 1994 election ushered conservative true-believers into a House majority under the bomb-throwing banners of Newt and Rush, the brakes weren't just worn out, they were sawed off.

They've been operating under that system ever since.

[HughBeaumont]

17. Well, there were these people named Kennedy . . .

But seriously, this is idiotic and pathetic at this point. Time for these jokers to pack it in and worry about their own party . . . plenty to keep them busy there.

[Odin2005]

18. It's because Bill's first term coincided with the rise of RW Hate Radio.

I also think all the RW BS over Waco played a part in it, too, as well as Hillary being such an assertive first lady.