Sunday, April 26, 2015

Last Call For Memento Mori

People seem to thing Hillary Clinton is doomed by the "revelations" in the book Clinton Cash by Peter Schweizer.  And some Republicans remember that the Clintons are if anything, survivors who are hard to put down.

Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson cautioned members of his party Sunday against overconfidence when it comes to Schweizer's blockbuster claims.

“Republicans need to be careful not to overstate the case,” Hutchinson said on Meet the Press. “There’s no evidence of quid pro quo."

Schweizer made the political talk show rounds arguing just the opposite on Sunday, likening the donations made Clinton Foundation during the time that Mrs. Clinton served as secretary of state to insider trading.

Hutchinson countered that all the Schweizer's book really shows is "evidence of mistakes" made by Clinton Foundation. Furthermore, Hutchinson said that, ultimately, those mistakes would not end up swaying a majority of votes. “It doesn’t impact her base or the Republican base,” Hutchinson said of the allegations. “It impacts the voters in the middle.”

There are few voters "in the middle" when it comes to Hillary Clinton.  She's been in the national political spotlight for nearly 25 years now, and the notion that there are still enough people in 2016 who are mulling over Hillary Clinton versus the GOP is laughable. People have already formed their opinions about her, and those opinions have been held for years.

That this hit job of a book is going to change an election 18 months from now is silly.  But it shows how terrified Republicans are of losing to yet another Clinton for the White House. The Clintons have a lot of old friends in the business.

Clinton Cash author Peter Schweizer appeared on This Week and faced a very skeptical George Stephanopoulos, who argued that his accusations that Hillary Clinton exchanged favorable treatment from the U.S. State Department for multimillion dollar donations to the Clinton Foundation were unsubstantiated.

The most significant of the allegations center on a Russian company that was approved by the State Department to purchase a Canadian uranium company, giving Russia a sizable stake in the world’s uranium market, after a $2.3 million donation to the Clinton Foundation. But Stephanopoulos pointed out that the State Department was one of nine agencies that signed off on the deal, and that “there’s no evidence at all that Hillary Clinton got directly involved at all in this decision.” (A smiliar argument was made by Clinton surrogate Lanny Davis over on Fox News Sunday.)

“There were nine different agencies who approved it,” Stephanopoulos said. “Doesn’t that suggest that that was because there was no national security concern, not because of some nefarious influence by Hillary Clinton?”

“We don’t have direct evidence,” Schweizer said. “But it warrants further investigation because, again, this is part of the broader pattern. You either have to come to the conclusion that these are all coincidences, or something else is afoot.”

And by dragging out this nothingburger early in the fight, the Clintons now have the ability to defuse this long before it becomes a problem.



3 comments:

Horace Boothroyd III said...

the notion that there are still enough people in 2016 who are mulling over Hillary Clinton versus the GOP is laughable.</

This is exactly correct in the traditional sense of the left/right divide, but out on the fringes the left/gibbering idiot divide yawns ever more disturbing every day. Among these people the question is whether Clinton is so maniacally evil that they must for the good of the nation sabotage her election and allow the Republicans to rule, despite the threat of Supreme Court Justice appointees who could potentially hand down right wing votes for the next fifty years and the strong possibility that the Republicans might well take of control every branch of the Federal Government and dig themselves in for the long run, or whether the Republicans are so maniacally evil that they should merely sit out the elections as a demonstration of the political strength.

And it's not just Clinton in the hysterical ninny cross hairs. Senator Wyden of Oregon, darling of the NSA paranoids, has enraged the mob with his heretical opinions on TPP so he must be eliminated. NOW. Crushed as an example to the others.

Now, to be sure, Oregon is one of the few states where the gibbering idiot left might actually have enough of a presence to have some kind of influence on something - although with all of those qualifiers it's difficult to be sure about anything. Perhaps they really could make an impressive demonstration of some kind, yet the wisdom and gutting and skinning one of their own remains to be seen. I of course hold that we should put our energy into crippling the Republican Party, for good, before we turn to fighting amongst ourselves.

Scopedog said...

"I of course hold that we should put our energy into crippling the
Republican Party, for good, before we turn to fighting amongst
ourselves."


Agreed--but as we've seen too many times since 2000, some feel that the Democrats are worse than the GOP (I know, I know....it makes no damned sense, but there it is) and that the GOP taking things over will lead to a great revolution and a new paradise. Of course, what will happen will be the opposite--but when you have an attitude that is driven by ideological purity instead of pragmatism, such things will go unnoticed.

Horace Boothroyd III said...

That is another weird aspect in this whole ball of stupid. Every leftie candidate is blown up to be the reincarnation of FDR, as every Republican fancies himself the new Reagan, who can sweep into the White House and fix everything with a sweep of his magic wand. They show no evidence in the least of understanding that FDR was a master politician at the head of a robust coalition, and even then he had to make hard choices that favored one part of the team over the other. Not only do these people have zero interest in building an effective coalition, the very first moment they feel the sting of a disappointment they will turn on their erstwhile savior like a bag of rabid weasels - just like they did with President Obama, who they worshiped to the skies before casting him down and reviling him as a toady and a corporate sellout.

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