The term “Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy” was coined in 1998 by Hillary Clinton. It was born of her frustration about the runaway investigations that began with “Whitewater” through the Monica Lewinski matter, which led to Bill Clinton’s impeachment. But as the investigations grew, so did Bill’s popularity. He left office as one of our most popular presidents, and is still the most popular Democrat in the country. Hillary, not so much.
People like Bill Clinton. His smile is contagious. He looks you in the eye. He listens carefully and humbly. When he says he “feels your pain,” you believe it. Hillary has never been so lucky. While controversy rolls off Bill’s back, like water off a duck; the same scandals drag behind Hillary, like luggage without wheels. Why is that? It comes down to personality.
There’s an old movie called Primary Colors, based on the book by “Anonymous” (cough Joe cough Klein cough). In it, John Travolta plays a (thinly) fictionalized Bill Clinton. He is portrayed as a womanizer, with Emma Thompson playing his long-suffering wife. While it’s not really non-fiction, they got the personalities right. Bill is open and friendly and charming. Hillary is closed, suspicious, and awkward. And increasingly paranoid.
The term, “vast right-wing conspiracy” came from an interview on NBC’s Today Show, telling Matt Lauer, “This is—the great story here for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president.”
There is some validity to Hillary’s claim. Wikipedia says that the only thing wrong is the word, “vast.” The article says that someone in the Bush41 White House even warned, “We will do everything we can to destroy you personally.” And then, “to the well-documented efforts by conservative financier Richard Mellon Scaife to fund a network of anti-Clinton investigations.”
Some say there would be no investigations if there were nothing to investigate, but that would ignore the fact that people think someone is probably guilty of something if they are being investigated. That’s especially true if the investigations go on and on. It took Ken Starr four years (of taxpayer money) to find something he could finally sink his teeth into.
But it works both ways. Back in 1973, with the Vietnam War raging, dragging the economy down so badly that we had wage-price controls. Yet, rather than focus on the needs of the country, Democrats focused on Watergate. It’s not that such things shouldn’t be investigated. The problem was that there was a “vast leftwing conspiracy” to slow down the investigation, to ruin Nixon, and damage the GOP.
In the original version of this page, we quoted ConservativeAmerica’s claim that Hillary was fired from the investigation by her “boss,” Jerry Zeifman.
However, after we published, the Washington Post debunked that story. As it turns out, Zeifman was just on the staff, not in a position of power. He was not Hillary’s boss, and he never claimed to have fired her. The investigation simply ended because Nixon resigned, and the investigation dissolved.
The Post did note, however, that Democrat Zeiferman was angry with the other investigators, because they were purposely dragging things out. Republicans obviously learned a lesson from that.
That is not to say that Hillary (or Bill) is clean as the driven snow. The biggest issue has always been Bill’s libido—and Hillary’s making excuses for him—and attacking the women who claimed they had had affairs with him. Breitbart is still writing about the Paula Jones episode from 1991.
Speaking to weekend talk radio host Aaron Klein, [Paula] Jones slammed Hillary as a “two-faced” “liar” who waged a war on women by trying to discredit “predator” Bill’s sexual accusers.
“And how dare her. You know what? She don’t care nothing about women. Because if she did she would believe what I had to say. She would believe what the other women had to say. ”. . .
“She needs to support all of us and she needs to believe all of us if she says she believes women that claim sexual harassment and they have a right to be heard.”
Then there was Vince Foster. His death was declared a suicide by a horde of investigators, including Ken Starr, but the fact that there even was an investigation is curiously used as “evidence” that it had merit(?)
Following Foster’s death the United States Park Police, assisted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, conducted an investigation. In addition, Independent Counsel Robert B. Fiske and Whitewater Independent Counsel Ken Starr both weighed in with reports on Foster’s death. These investigations were in addition to two U.S. Congress investigations. While each investigation or report concluded suicide, the sheer amount of U.S. Taxpayer funded resources dedicated to this question continues to fuel the question – how and why did Vince Foster die?
Then, there was Whitewater, in which the Clintons were condemned for losing money in a land deal. But the “scandal” really involved Bill Clinton helping Susan MacDougal get a loan.
In what reads like a novel on cronyism raised to a fine art form, the crux of the Whitewater scandal hinged on David Hale, a former Arkansas municipal judge and banker. Hale claimed in November 1993 that Bill Clinton, as Governor of Arkansas, pressured him into providing an illegal $300,000 loan to Susan McDougal, partner of the Clintons in the Whitewater land deal.
Then, of course, there was the Lewinski scandal, and a question of whether a “blowjob” really constitutes having “sexual relations.” If you don’t think the two are exactly equal, then Bill Clinton was innocent. Except that there’s the whole issue of adultery (which is not a crime) and abuse of power in the workplace (which is). Regardless, it only involved Hillary because she “stood by her man,” and came out swinging. And she never stopped swinging.
According to the Blaze, Hillary still thinks big money is being poured into investigations against her.
Anderson Cooper asked the former secretary of state during tonight’s CNN town hall in New Hampshire whether she still thinks the “vast right-wing conspiracy,” which she blamed for attacks on then-President Bill Clinton, is alive and well.
“Don’t you?” Clinton quipped. “Yeah, it’s gotten even better-funded. You know, they brought in some new multi-billionaires to pump the money in.”
Later, she added: “At this point it’s probably not correct to say it’s a conspiracy, because it is out in the open. There is no doubt about what they’re doing.”
Hillary is scared of the media, which is why she refuses to have press conferences. And that’s a problem, with an office which has never really been open and transparent. Obama promised to keep things transparent, but they became opaque almost immediately.
She is even more frightened of the Alt-Right movement, which Business Insider equates with racist nationalism, and will do anything to achieve its goals.
But Hillary’s real problem is still her personality. Increasingly, over the past decade or two, one of the litmus tests for being president is, “which candidate would you rather have a beer with?” GW Bush beat Gore, hands down. Likewise, Bush v Kerry. Gore and Kerry are both wooden characters, while “W” is a “good ol’ boy.” Obama came in as a fresh face, against one of the oldest faces around, in John McCain. And you couldn’t have a beer with Romney, even if he were not Mormon. He’s just too uptight.
This year’s election may be decided by the debates more than anytime since 1960, when the suntanned and rested JFK blew away the ill Richard Nixon (with the five-o’clock shadow). These days, we want to “like” our presidents, not respect them. And if Hillary can’t find a way to be “likeable enough” (as Obama put it) during the first debate on September 26, we’ll have an entirely different race for the White House.
Update: This story has been revised to reflect accurate information regarding the question of whether Hillary Clinton was fired from the Watergate investigation.
