David Harsanyi:
In the past few days a number of notable liberals have decided to take allegations of sexual assault against former president Bill Clinton seriously. Let’s just say that discarding the Clintons when they’re no longer politically useful to retroactively grab the higher moral ground isn’t exactly an act of heroism. But if we’re going to re-litigate history, let’s get it right.
“That so many women have summoned the courage to make public their allegations against Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Roger Ailes, and Bill O’Reilly—or that many have come to reconsider some of the claims made against Bill Clinton—represents a cultural passage,” says David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker (my italics). It takes plenty of courage to face powerful men with sexual assault allegations. But how much courage needs to be summoned to “reconsider” Bill Clinton’s behavior now, more than 20 years after we first learned about it? Zero. Democrats pay no political price for going after the former president, nor will Clinton face any consequences.
In The New York Times, Michelle Goldberg spends around 75 percent of her column titled “I Believe Juanita” rationalizing why it was okay not to believe Juanita Broaddrick, who credibly accused Bill Clinton of rape decades ago. You won’t be surprised to learn that Goldberg faults conservatives because their hardball politics and conspiracy-mongering provoked skepticism among liberals — excuses that will be awfully familiar to anyone following the justification of Roy Moore’s supporters.
One problem with Goldberg’s contention is that the Broaddrick allegation was uncovered by NBC News, not Richard Scaife. Well, specifically, it was uncovered by NBC News after the network sat on the story throughout the impeachment proceedings against the president. According to the network, the story had to be put through an arduous factchecking process that included figuring out where Clinton had been the day of the alleged rape — something that had been worked out in a few days’ time.
Then again, the myth that most of the media was enthusiastic about uncovering damaging stories relating to Clinton’s background persists today. The New York Timesand The Los Angeles Times, for example, both had their hands on Broaddrick’s rape allegation in 1992 but dropped the story. It’s also worth remembering that Michael Isikoff was fired after fighting with his editors at The Washington Post after they dragged their feet on the Paula Jones story in 1994. Again in 1998, Isikoff’s reporting on Monica Lewinsky for Newsweek was shelved until The Drudge Report brought it to the public’s attention. Only after that point did the reporting take off.
In any event, Broaddrick’s story had a short shelf life despite the fact that five witnesses claimed she had told them about the rape right after it happened. There were other credible sexual assault allegations against Bill Clinton that went largely ignored. In his book “Partners in Power: The Clintons and Their America,” published in 1996, Roger Morris, who was hardly a right-wing conspiracy theorist, reported:
A young woman lawyer in Little Rock claimed that she was accosted by Clinton when he was attorney general and that when she recoiled he forced himself on her, biting and bruising her. Deeply affected by the assault, the woman decided to keep it all quiet for the sake of her hardwon career and that of her husband. When the husband later saw Clinton at the 1980 Democratic Convention, he delivered a warning. ‘If you ever approach her,’ he told the governor, ‘I’ll kill you.’ Not even seeing fit to deny the incident, Bill Clinton sheepishly apologized and duly promised never to bother her again.
For those who followed the Clinton stories in those years, the “biting and bruising” will sound familiar. The woman was never found by reporters.
Yet, however reluctant editors might have been in moving forward with these stories, the fact is that most of them were ultimately brought to the public’s attention by established news organizations, not shady right-wing outlets. Still, Democrats weren’t merely skeptical of these women, they often treated them with disdain and smeared them for political expediency.
Even today, there is so much throat-clearing and blame-shifting when it comes to talking about Clinton that it is highly unlikely the dynamics have really changed. Goldberg, for instance, links to a Brian Beutler article in which he cautions liberals to treat future accusation against Democrats in the same way liberals treated Broaddrick.
Like all things with the liberals, any of their principles are only for political utility. They would have a hard time admitting that, oh yeah, all of a sudden it DOES look fishy that all those women have accused Clinton consistently over decades and never disappeared just when their accusations are no longer damaging.
Then again, liberals have no problem reversing on one of their lies with the belief that everyone will simply forget what has been said up till now.
Dems need to destroy the Clintons because it appears to be the only way they can break free of them.
Dems need, desperately, to move on.
Their bench is virtually non-existent.
I mean, Biden is floated as their next Dem Presidential nominee!
Groping, creepy, racist Biden!
@Nanny G: Hillary is a tremendous albatross around the neck of the Democrats. She is repugnant to voters, can no longer hide her corruption, is about to become a central figure in a tremendous, scandalous investigation. She repels donors. And, she just won’t shut the f**k up.
Bill has just about lost his worth, being as mired in scandal as Hillary. Now that sexual harassment has reared its ugly head again (and appears to be the one weapon the left can depend on, now that they have completely worn out racism), to USE that weapon, protecting old worn out Bill is turning into quite the liability.
Cashing in the Clinton’s is a small price to pay, though there will be that little issue of having denied all their dirt for 35 years. Oh well… it was a good run.