Posted on 04/26/2015 7:00:37 PM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
On the surface, it isn’t that hard to understand the Clinton Cash scandal that Democrats are trying very hard to ignore this week. We have a former president making millions giving speeches and doing favors for wealthy foreign entities and nations that give massive sums to the Clinton family charity that subsidizes the lavish lifestyle of the former First Family. He did this at the same time as his wife spent four years as secretary of state where she made decisions that influence the fortunes of those donors. And all this was happening while said former first lady/secretary of state is planning to run for president herself at the next opportunity. No one can deny that this smells to high heaven of impropriety, and the best Billy and Hillary’s court of admirers and apologists can say in their defense is that the evidence of a conflict of interest is circumstantial and that there is no smoking gun proving their guilt. But there is another defense that Politico’s national editor Michael Hirsch hints at in a piece published yesterday: their marriage is so dysfunctional that any alleged coordination between the two is unlikely.
As Hirsh notes, to discuss the “impenetrable” Clinton marriage is a difficult task. Upon their arrival on the national stage in the 1992 presidential campaign, Americans have on the one hand been deluged with far more information about the Clintons’ relationship than we wanted, as he confessed to having “caused pain,” while never giving us any further explanations. A few years later Bill plunged the nation into a degrading debate about the definition of sex and whether it’s OK to commit perjury about acts of sexual harassment after his dalliance with an intern in the Oval Office. Since then we’ve been asked at one and the same time to sympathize with Hillary as the long suffering wife while also being warned to keep our noses out of their private business.
Would that we could. As Brit Hume recently noted on Fox, one of the key questions about Hillary’s presidential prospects is whether the “American people want another four, eight years of the Clintons and their weird marriage.”
That sounds pretty harsh and uncharacteristically ungentlemanly coming from the courtly Hume. But he’s on to something that can neither be ignored nor swept under the carpet. Having asked us to take them as a two-for-one package in 1992, the ordeal of watching their odd contortions as a couple has become a long national nightmare that, if she wins in 2016, will have no end in sight.
If the questions about them were merely the prosaic ones about whether their continuing union is one primarily of convenience like some royal dynastic pairing rather than a conventional marriage in which two people strive to love and stay together, any queries about their private lives would be rude and even inadmissible. Whether the Clintons are in any sense a romantic couple is none of our business. But if they are still a working political partnership, then we are entitled to know a great deal about their personal interactions. In particular, we deserve to learn about how large a role Bill played as an advisor to her when she was running U.S. foreign policy. We’re also entitled to know more about her role in their charity’s insatiable campaign to raise enormous amounts of cash from individuals, companies, and countries. In classic “pay for play” style, those donors thought they could do themselves quite a bit of good by giving to the Clintons rather than more established philanthropies that were not run by former and perhaps future presidents.
Other than merely claiming that we can’t prove it to a legal certainty without a smoking gun, Mrs. Clinton’s defense against the allegations raised in Clinton Cash rests on a few shaky limbs onto which her defenders can climb. One is to assert that the actions the Department of State took that benefitted Clinton donors were handled below her level. Which is to say she was, shades of Benghazi, not in the know about crucial decisions taking place on her watch. Which is to say she was an incompetent secretary of state.
Another possible defense raised by Hirsh is that Clinton was completely removed from major policy decisions in the Obama administration. This has a ring of truth to it as Obama distrusts the Clintons and runs a top-down administration in which Cabinet secretaries have little say on important matters, though that doesn’t absolve her on issues that the president did not decide. It also further undermines her claim that her experience as secretary of state entitles her to the presidency.
Yet there is an even more credible defense that Clinton’s clique can’t raise. It is that Bill and Hillary are just so disconnected a couple that the idea that they coordinated the family charity business with her foreign-policy ambitions is absurd.
Is this true? We don’t know for sure and, as with so much else about the Clintons, we may never know. Whatever their personal problems might be, their political and business partnership seems to be intact. Moreover, that defense didn’t work for an equally dysfunctional couple, Bob and Maureen McDonnell, when they faced prosecution for pay to play charges for their actions during his time as governor of Virginia.
Whatever form their personal relationship now takes, it’s too late to say that the vast charitable and political web they have woven is none of our business. Both Bill and Hillary have benefitted enormously from their charitable empire and so have those who donated to it.
Getting to the bottom of the Clinton Cash problem may require us, as Hirsh says, to “unscramble the omelet.” The putative 2016 Democratic Party candidate for president has shown no signs of being willing to speak candidly about these questions and a presidential campaign is a bad time for the pair to sort out their marriage for the public. It might be the best defense she can offer, but Hillary is unlikely to try to acquit herself of any involvement in the Clinton Foundation’s dirty business by telling us the truth about how disconnected the two really are.
and then Hillary has the nerve to suggest “we must get all of the big money out of our campaigns, even if it means amending our Constitution”.
What this means is that they know the GOP would comply and be at a disadvantage as the Dems cheat as always.
There isn’t much to discover. The Clinton Foundation was a money laundering system for the bribes the Clintons were taking.
Clinton fatigue is back. “Clinton rejection” should be the new catch phrase.
one thing I hate is that I have weak/no debating skills. there was a guy on the Kelly factor that had reasonable comebacks or the whole Russia/Uranium deal. He even put Kelly on the spot, did anyone see it/
I KNOW the whole deal was crooked but he said eight other voted to allow the sale of the company, the donations were reported in other ledgers, the deal started under Bush etc.
I know someone with strong command of facts could have killed him, like CRUZ!!!! I am not that bright
CLINTONAGGRESSION,...
I DONT Feel Safe...when I hear about them....
Of course it was in their best interest to collaborate - it’s the glue that holds them together. I heard some idiots trying to say they kept things separate and there was a wall while she was SOS. Rigghhhht....
His speeches were her money - her machinations as SOS were his money.
50/50 money - it’s what binds them.
8 others voted for this? Did Hillary tell them to?
The deal stinks - if 8 others voted then I wonder what their angle was - it certainly wasn’t looking out for the best interests of the USA. Treason seems to be the new chic.
The key to “debate skills” is to have a command of the facts AND to not fall for bogus arguments.
The “bogus” element in play here is that we’re to believe that the other 8 voting agencies would have to have been in on the gig.
Not true.
They just know that their job is to rubber stamp ANYTHING the administration puts forward.
There’s more than just one rude question to answer!
Next thing you know they’ll be selling AIDS infected blood from the Arkansas prison system to hemophiliacs...again
It wont be long!!
Mrs and Mr. Clinton...are headed up river!!
I agree!! they are all traitors most likely. I will investigate the other responses or answers.
we KNOW the whole thing was crooked. I wish TED was on the show lol.
But I don’t want to make Cruz a God because that will lead to disappointment if he gives one wrong answer.
He is close to a god, lol. Jesus is my spiritual savior. Cruz could be my country’s savior.
THe biggest scandal of them all is that this has been going on for years and nobody talked about until now. We had a Secretary of State who was “on the take.” I am very very tired of saying what do you think would have happened if this were a Republican. We have a class of people who get away with selling this Country out and not only don’t we do anything, we act as if it’s not happening and elect them over and over and over.
Yes. A scandal that no one remembers and not one Clinton was held accountable for. Thanks for reminding us. All of hem should be in prison.
uh-huh (clearing throat)
I have no doubt that all of this and more is true. They’ve been crooked all their public lives.
My question is why all of a sudden this is being trotted out? What did they do to miff off the powers that be? Or were they just too outright arrogant with the emails and the money. Do they need a scapegoat? Are they going to pin Benghazi strictly on her? Do they have another commie in mind?
last sentence was great. CHIC is right.
we have to stop a flowing river, and then REVERSE it It will be hard pus I don’t have the strength I did 15 years ago when I was up till the morning the night o the Bush election. I had such high hopes that were deflated.
I closed my eyes to rising deficits and messy wars and silly compassionate conservatism. will NEVER be bind again. GO AWAY Jeb. looks like he is in the polls :)
the country gave us the executive and legislative branches and e BLEW IT!!! why!!!
could have changed the country right there and then!!
Both should be lifers.
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