Free Republic

How do you know that a Democrat has found him or herself embroiled in a particularly devastating scandal? When the press begins to ask when the Republicans will begin “overplaying” their hands. This weekend, you could feel the ground beginning to fall out from beneath Hillary Clinton’s supporters as members of the reporting and commentary classes began to express their doubts about the former secretary of state’s ethics. Among some prominent members of the media who are generally not predisposed to dismiss the Democratic candidate in a presidential race, the Clinton Foundation’s shady fundraising practices and the former secretary’s...

RUTH MARCUS, WASHINGTON POST: I think that's a really important point because I went back for purposes of writing this column that appeared in yesterday's paper and you can find it online at WashingtonPost.com and decided it was a little too cheap to use those words against him because we don't know what the president is saying he can't do versus what he is going to announce he is going to do. So, I'm really happy to hoist him on the petard of his words once he acts , if that's appropriate.

Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus suggested former President Bill Clinton was not entirely culpable for his affair with Monica Lewinsky Monday on MSNBC. The comment came in the context of a discussion about Sen. Rand Paul’s (R., Ky.) comments yesterday where he accused President Clinton of “predatory behavior” toward his former White House intern. Marcus said Republicans seem to address female sexuality only in the contexts of victimization or promiscuity. To evidence her point, Marcus added she did not believe Monica Lewinsky was an entirely “innocent victim” in the scandal. “I recall some thong flashing there,” she said. Full exchange:...

RUTH MARCUS, WASHINGTON POST: I think it comes to something very interesting that ties together the Huckabee comments and the Rand Paul comments, which is there's only two ways -- there seem to me a tendency to talk about women in two ways when it comes to sex and sexual activity. Either they're terrible victims preyed on by older men as in Monica Lewinsky. President Clinton did a bad, bad thing, Monica Lewinsky was not precisely an innocent victim completely, I recall thong flashing there. They're either innocent victims or they are sexually promiscuous, slutty, low-life women. There's no sort...

Somebody cue the Debbie Downer horn. How bad are things for President Obama? In recent days, the Washington Post has brought us a double-barreled downer blast from two pundits who normally support the president. All you need to know about Dana Milbank's and Ruth Marcus' columns you can glean from their respective final sentences, which read: "Maybe the president does understand that the game is over." And "Can he recover? I’m sorry to say: I’m not at all confident." Wah-wah, indeed! More here.

Welcome to the new Washington normal: endless rounds of legislative carjacking. Perhaps that's unduly grim — pessimism fueled by the exhaustion of the moment. Perhaps, having peered into the abyss of political gridlock and economic collapse, those Republicans who pushed things to the brink this time will be chastened on the next round. Perhaps, but I'm sticking with pessimism. One side wanted the car, had a gun and wasn't afraid — certainly not afraid enough — to use it. The other had a child in the back seat. Those who blame Democrats or President Obama for being lousy negotiators fail...

Regarding Ruth Marcus's May 26 column, "Sarah Palin's lamestream thinking": I heard Ms. Palin's comments about President Obama and "Big Oil" and drew an entirely different conclusion. I do not think Ms. Palin meant to imply that Obama is in the pocket of Big Oil; I think she meant to imply that the mainstream (lamestream) media have been incredibly reluctant to investigate the remote possibility that Obama may have been influenced by his energy industry contributions. By contrast, she implied that if George W. Bush were still president, the equally remote possibility that he may have been influenced by oil...

Ruth Marcus, Reporter for The Washington Post, is a fairly accurate barometer by which we can estimate how much our elite intelligentsia really understands the nation it condescends to and calls stupid. Cry the beloved country. Her latest reading shows us the presence of an intellectual low pressure system. Ramesh Ponnuru stands appropriately gobsmacked. Ruth Marcus writes, "McCain's angry denunciation of socialist wealth-spreading ignores the fact that the country has always had a progressive tax code." Not having vented her spleen enough through her slanders against John McCain’s campaign, Marcus then has to do violence to the history behind taxation...

Kerry distorts, takes out of context, and mistakes all the time, but these are not central to his efforts to win. We have a responsibility to hold both sides accountable to the public interest, but that doesn't mean we reflexively and artificially hold both sides "equally" accountable when the facts don't warrant that. -- memo from Mark Halperin, then the ABC News Political Director, to his staff, October 8, 2004. All campaigns fall short, but some fall far shorter than others. And it is a phony evenhandedness, comfortable for journalists but ultimately misleading, that equates these failures without measuring the...

In a revealing moment of MSM elitism, WaPo editorialist Ruth Marcus, discussing the decision of Silda Wall Spitzer to appear with her husband Eliot yesterday, wanted people to know Mrs. Spitzer is a Harvard law grad and a "serious" person, not a Tammy Wynette type. Marcus was interviewed by Contessa Brewer on MSNBC this afternoon, and the pair turned to the question of why political wives tend to appear with their husbands who have been caught up in sex scandals. RUTH MARCUS: I just don't think that we should lump all these women together. And to use a line that...

Does it matter that ABC invented and distorted history in its "warning: this is not a documentary" docudrama, "The Path to 9/11"? After all, the first night of the faux drama was trounced by the brother-against-brother actual drama of "Sunday Night Football." But consider: The gripping final report of the Sept. 11 commission (budget: $13.5 million) became a surprise bestseller at 1.5 million copies. The not-so-gripping, not-so-accurate ABC production (budget: $40 million) was seen by about 13 million viewers on the first night. As Thomas H. Kean, who served as the commission's chairman and then made the unfortunate decision to...

I have a new theory about what's behind everything that's wrong with the Bush administration: manliness. "Manliness" is the unapologetic title of a new book by Harvey C. Mansfield, a conservative professor of government at Harvard University, which makes him a species as rare as a dissenting voice in the Bush White House. Mansfield's thesis is that manliness, which he sums up as "confidence in the face of risk," is a misunderstood and unappreciated attribute. Manliness, he writes, "seeks and welcomes drama and prefers times of war, conflict, and risk." It entails assertiveness, even stubbornness, and craves power and action....