Posted on 03/06/2015 5:27:21 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Historically, the Clintons have proved to be politically indestructible. To paraphrase the movie Aliens, to truly destroy the Clinton-Industrial Complex, you’d have to nuke it from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
Given that alone, I doubt that the unfolding controversy over Hillary’s e-mail schemes spells her doom.
The basic details are as follows: In 2009, a week before she started her job as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton had a personal Internet server registered at her home address. She then used her own domain name, “clintonemail.com,” to conduct all of her business — for the State Department, but also presumably the Clinton Foundation and other matters, be they nefarious or high-minded.
The server was registered under the name Eric Hoteman — someone who doesn’t exist. But it’s almost surely Eric Hothem, a Washington financial adviser and former aide to Clinton who, according to the Associated Press, has been a technology adviser to the family. Tony Soprano would be envious.
This system allowed Clinton to maintain control over her e-mail correspondence. No third-party copies would be stored on, say, government or Google hard drives. Matt Devost, a security expert, succinctly explained to Bloomberg News the point of having your own private e-mail server: “You erase it and everything’s gone.”
Depending on whom you ask, this was a violation of Obama-administration policy, long-established State Department rules, the Federal Records Act, or all of the above. Moreover, outside the ranks of Clinton-Industrial Complex employees, contractors, and supplicants, there’s a rare bipartisan consensus that it was, to use a technical term, really, really shady.
Team Clinton’s initial response was as expected: Send out oleaginous flacks to shoot the messenger and befog the issue. That failed. Even normally reliable resellers of Clinton spin at MSNBC balked at the prospect of keeping a straight face as David Brock, a prominent Clinton remora, tried to demand an apology from the New York Times for breaking the story.
Then Mrs. Clinton weighed in to somewhat greater effect. She tweeted, “I want the public to see my email. I asked State to release them. They said they will review them for release as soon as possible.”
This was a reference to the “55,000 pages” of e-mails Clinton handed over to the State Department in response to a request. It’s also a classic bit of misdirection. Among the swirling issues at play is whether Clinton handed over all of her official business e-mails as required. (The State Department offers no clarity on this.) The whole point of having your own private server is that no one can check to make sure you didn’t selectively delete or withhold e-mails.
The number of pages is also meaningless. First, if you’ve ever printed out e-mail, you know that “pages” and “e-mails” are not synonymous terms. But even if they were, so what? I could release 99.99 percent of all my e-mails, and you’d see little more than boring work product, press releases, spam, and appeals from Nigerian oil ministers. My incriminating stuff could remain invisible — valuable snowflakes held back from a blizzard of chaff. If you don’t think the Clintons are capable of such legerdemain, I refer you to the Clinton-inspired debate over billing records and the meaning of “is.”
This points to another reason why I think Clinton will survive this mess. If there’s a damning e-mail out there, it’s been deleted, and the relevant hard drive would be harder to find than Jimmy Hoffa’s body. So critics are probably left with the task of proving a negative.
The real significance of this moment — and a partial explanation of the media firestorm over it — is that time is running out to stop the Clinton freight train.
Nothing in this story is surprising: not the desire for secrecy, nor the flouting of legal norms, nor the cynical attempts to shoot the messengers — and certainly not the staggering hypocrisy. (In 2007, then-senator Clinton denounced the Bush White House’s far more defensible use of “secret” Republican National Committee e-mail addresses for campaign business as proof that “our Constitution is being shredded.”) It’s all vintage Clinton.
At some point down the tracks, when yet another fetid cloud of Clintonism erupts into plain view, many smart liberals will look back at this moment as the time when they should have pulled the emergency brake and gotten off the Hillary train.
The unease they feel now will be nothing compared to the buyer’s remorse to come.
— Jonah Goldberg is a senior editor of National Review and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Here's why this will sink Hillary: the elite liberal donor class likes to see themselves in glorious tones and shades of secular sainthood.
YES they ARE the people who run to help runaway slaves ( slaves who - in today's world - have morphed into black thugs protecting criminals - but who's really looking?)
YES, and saving women - (barefoot and chained to stoves - ever so grateful to their saviors) - women who morphed into a politically powerful self-serving force... You get the idea...
Liberal elite donors want to see their reflection in the mirror - a reflection of greatness... not the image of a person scamming to bring conniving trailer trash to the fore... NOPE, that's not what they want to see...
And that's what liberal elite donors get with Hillary. She a manipulator - constantly manipulating for the next dollar - the next payoff that will allow her to by the trapping of class... so she can continue to manipulate for the next dollar. Scrapping - trashy.
It's not pretty, or high minded, or rebelling against the system on principle... it's just tacky. Low life tacky... Hillary level tacky. That's why this issue won't go away.
“This is a calculated move to get her out of the race.”
I agree ... but from a tactical standpoint, she’s the best they got. In many ways, she’s all they got.
I have no idea why they’re in love with Warren aside from her ideology. She’s not as abrasive as Hillary, but she wouldn’t have nowhere near the broad appeal Obama had among independents and minorities in 2008.
My tin foil hat tells me that they want to throw 2016 to the Repubs since they know something big is going to happen with the economy. I can’t see how worldwide debt is not going to be a massive problem over the next 10 years. Whoever is in charge when that occurs is going to be blamed for all of it.
You are right about dumping her. The proof will be in the intensity and endurance of the drumbeat from OTHER than conservative sources. Anything, truth or lie, spoken often enough is chiseled in stone and becomes its own important credo.
I have no idea, either. She still has virtually no name-recognition outside of ardent feminists, devoted leftists and Massachusetts voters. If average Americans recall her at all, it's as "that woman who tried to run as an Indian." And that's a truly bad starting point. As far as I can see, her potential Presidential run is just wishful thinking on the part of a media completely desperate for a Democrat candidate who isn't Hillary.
So you're saying she's popular with the base of the democrat party?
I think Mickey Gilley said it best. The girls all get prettier at closing time.
That’s what I think about HILLARY CLINTON.
Right now, the night is young, I’ve not yet had my first beer, there are lots of pretty women all across the bar, and HILLARY CLINTON is the crazy size-24 cat lady in the corner who smells of urine and eats her boogers.
And has warts.
And poor personal hygiene.
And looks like she doesn’t like men anyway.
I wouldn’t blank her with your blank.
But I’m afraid I know how this night is going to turn out...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3264913/posts?page=1
My memory is lousy but I think Baraq Obama was kind of a similar presence in March 2007. The journ-0-lists have a blank slate to create a winning candidate.
It doesn’t matter how late it is, how desperate I am, how much I’ve had to drink; Hildabeast is NOT now nor is she EVER getting my vote.
In reality I was approached at a bar by a rather unattractive woman who was quite willing. I figured what the heck and proceeded to drink a lot. The more I drank the more sober I felt. It was not happening!
I think there are more than a few Democrats who want to dump her, but who else do they have that has name recognition and the ability to raise lots of money including from illegal sources? That said look at 2008 when everyone thought she was going to easily get the nomination and she was upended by an obscure Black Senator from Illinois who came out of no where. Hillary lacks Bill’s natural charm and often comes off as shrill, condescending and not very likable. Even her best line of 2008 when she hit Obama with the who do you want to answer the 2 am phone call didn’t stick.
LOL - I suspect Democrats will take Hillary home with them when the bar closes...
“I think it’s because most low information DemocRAT voters expect their politicians to be crooks and lawless thugs. They want their politicians to be just like they are.”
Yup. The lefties with whom I am acquainted are actually proud of lefty politicians for their ability to flout the law, morality, and decency. In the slaying of patriotism, virtue, and The Republic, nothing is out of bounds and anything that harms what you and I believe is considered a virtue to them.
Ha! Well, the non-Hillary! wing of the base.
Of course, Obama wasn’t entirely a blank slate, because his backers could point endlessly to the books he “wrote” as evidence of his advanced intellect. Plus, he never claimed to be an Indian, only a native-born American.
If Benghazi couldn’t doom Obama 2 months later it sure can’t doom Hillary 4 years later. Meanwhile though nobody likes her anymore, I’m still saying she’s not even going to run.
Well, apparently one of her Guys did screw with Harrison Ford’s Airplane to divert attention from the Email scandal. LOL
Ah yes.. not a smidgen of classified information went to Hillary’s private email account. All those references to “intel” .. nothing to see here...
However, combined with the foreign money, the "dead broke" comments, the new sex scandals she may NOT survive.
Along with the fact that having her own server is SO smarmy (maybe also illegal) in itself regardless of whether they find any incriminating emails. And what of those incriminating emails...they may have been destroyed on her end but what about those in State and other agencies who received them. Will the IG's go after them?
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