A daily roundup of the biggest stories in right-wing media.
On Wednesday, conservatives scoffed at the wave of liberal journalists reappraising the sexual misconduct allegations against Bill Clinton, including a column by Michelle Goldberg in the New York Times titled “I Believe Juanita” and another piece by Matthew Yglesias in Vox arguing that Clinton should’ve resigned for the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Hot Air’s Allahpundit doesn’t buy Democratic contrition.
I’ve reached my fill after just two pieces, that Michelle Goldberg piece that Ed wrote about yesterday and now this new one from Matt Yglesias at Vox. I don’t deny that part of the impulse behind them is virtuous. If left and right together can inculcate an ethic against men abusing their power over women at work by making an example of their own worst offenders, better late than never. If nothing else, the “we should have been tougher on Bill” pieces can be cited later to invoke zero tolerance the next time a powerful Democrat is accused of sexual misconduct. Because there will be a next time, just as there’ll be a next time for powerful Republicans.
But the stench of opportunism is so thick, it’s suffocating. Only now, 20 years later, with the Clintons at the nadir of their political influence and a storm of sexual misconduct allegations in the media raging against left- and right-wingers alike to provide cover — only now is it safe to say, “Yeah, in hindsight, that wasn’t very woke of us”? Democrats had an opportunity just 18 months ago to reckon with Bill’s behavior and Hillary’s enabling of it by denying her their party’s nomination and they punted again.
“They didn’t just realize Clinton was a bad guy,” RedState’s Jim Jamitis wrote. “They just made a political calculation that told them admitting it now is a net gain for them. This wasn’t behavior that they had mistakenly overlooked. They actively participated in covering for Clinton and deliberately portrayed him as a mischievous rogue rather than a serial sexual predator, all for the sake of a partisan politics.” National Review’s Jim Geraghty also assessed the Clinton reevaluations, as well as an upcoming film about Ted Kennedy’s Chappaquidick scandal. “Was Bill Clinton a role model for how men can indulge their worst impulses and get away with it?” he asked. “Since the 1990s, how many men in powerful positions have seen Bill Clinton in that light? After all, all sorts of powerful people — from prominent feminists to powerful lawyers to the leaders of Clinton’s party — came to the consensus that the whole Lewinsky mess was a “private matter.” Perhaps the affair with her was — although Americans are right to expect better from a president — but the claims of Jones, Willey, and Broaddrick were not private matters in the slightest.”
The Federalist’s Daniel Payne wrote that Democrats shouldn’t stop at reckoning with the accusations against Clinton. “A ‘reckoning’ of the accusations against Bill Clinton must thus also function as a reckoning of the last couple of decades of Democratic politics, a politics that has featured Bill Clinton as an ancillary yet still near-permanent fixture,” he argued. “To reckon with all of this means to reckon with the Democratic party in toto—its political instincts, its morals, and its public credibility and future viability. The Left predictably isn’t very keen to do that. So we get what we’ve witnessed in the past week: liberals feigning a kind of come-to-Jesus public confessional over Bill Clinton while ultimately just complaining about conservatives.”
In other news:
Several outlets ran posts about Democrats in the House introducing articles of impeachment against President Trump. The Daily Caller’s Robert Donachie concluded his piece by noting that Republicans were focused on tax reform, but otherwise provided a straightforward report of the charges:
The congressmen list a number of charges against the president, including: obstruction of justice, a violation of the Constitution’s foreign emoluments clause, a violation of the Constitution’s domestic emoluments clause, undermining the federal judiciary process and undermining the press.
The articles focus primarily on Trump’s handing of the termination of former FBI Director James Comey, and potential conflicts of interest with Trump’s businesses and properties while he’s served as president.
Hot Air’s John Sexton took issue with one of Rep. Steve Cohen’s arguments for impeachment:
Given his concern for the freedom of the press, it’s interesting that when discussing his motives for filing these articles, Rep. Cohen blamed Trump for allowing neo-Nazis to march in Charlottesville. “I called [Nancy Pelosi] immediately after Charlottesville and I said ‘I know you’re not for this but I can’t stand by when he allows Klansman and neo-Nazis to demonstrate as they did and say … blood … Jews will not take our jobs, have tiki torches’ I said ‘I can’t do this.’ ”
The same First Amendment that protects the free press also guarantees the right of free speech and free assembly. Trump can be faulted for saying there were “fine people” marching with the neo-Nazis (and I disagreed with that when he said it) but he didn’t “allow” them to march. In fact, it would have been unconstitutional for him to attempt to disallow them. Despicable as they are, these groups have a right to march and to speak, a right that even the ACLU recognized at the time (though they also got a lot of blowback for taking a principled stance).
