The Clinton Rules Are Forever
Credit: www.politico.com
July 16, 2015

Gene Lyons:

Why does Hillary so dislike the political media? Because any normal person would, Allen thinks, if her first experience of them was being treated as a suspect in the death of a dear friend (Vince Foster) who’d committed suicide. And no, it wasn’t just Rush Limbaugh. It was Newsweek, Time, The Washington Post, the TV networks, basically everybody.

So a CNN interviewer asks the former Secretary of State why nobody trusts her and she’s supposed to show contrition or be derided as “inauthentic”? Allen’s Rule #5 states that “everything she does is fake and calculated for maximum political benefit.” If so, what answer can she possibly give?

Maybe the one she did give: that right-wing apparatchiks have been peddling this line to reporters for 25 years, but she’s won elections anyway. So aides used a rope line to keep reporters out of her face while she walked in a parade? Boo-hoo-hoo. They ought to be glad she didn’t break out stock whips and cattle prods.

Because that would be really bitchy.

Meanwhile, these guardians of public morality can be awfully selective about admitting their own mistakes. Consider the experience of Sidney Blumenthal, the former Clinton White House aide dragged before the latest House Benghazi investigation because he emailed Clinton information about Libya that was offered by a retired CIA analyst they both knew.

Supposedly, according to a heavy-breathing New York Times story, Blumenthal had highly suspicious financial interests in Libya. Supposedly, too, “the committee’s investigators are… interested in whether the planned business venture in Libya posed any potential conflicts for Mr. Blumenthal or Mrs. Clinton.”

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius depicted Blumenthal as Hillary’s “Svengali,” cunningly manipulating the Secretary of State for his own devious ends. It was all terribly suspicious, emblematic of Hillary’s well-known propensity for skirting the law.

Except that Blumenthal (a friend) had no such business ties, as his attorney and his subsequent testimony have made clear. He’s labored in vain to have that testimony released by seemingly embarrassed GOP investigators. So when will the Times and Post correct the damage to Blumenthal’s reputation?

I’m guessing never: Clinton rules.

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