Okay, now it's time for our other regular feature, it's the Clown Award, given as always for meritorious stupidity. And oh have we got gold medal material this time, true championship form.The winner of the big red nose this week is right-wing political operative Grover Norquist.
You know about Monica Lewinsky, Bill Clinton's paramour back in 1998, leading to the whole investigation-impeachment-blah-blah imbroglio. You also know about her recent article in Vanity Fair in which she talked about the affair, saying she was speaking about now because, quoting her, "I turned 40 last year and it’s time to stop tiptoeing around my past."
Well, of course in response to this the right wing reacted as it always does: It was immediately chock-a-block with conspiracy theories, the time about "why now," most of which revolved around somehow protecting Hillary Clinton as she prepares for an expected 2016 run for president.
For example, Lynne Cheney, wife of "The Big" Dick Cheney, suggested that the Clintons may have pushed Lewinsky to speak now so that any rehash of 1998 will be “old news” by the time of the 2016 primaries - as if it wasn't already.
But Grover Norquist had a different idea. Quoting him:This is the same trick the Clintons pulled on us back in ’98. We didn’t campaign against the massive overspending or anything else. We were distracted by this bright, shiny object they handed out, which was Monica Lewinsky. It'll be the same this time.That is, Grover Norquist is claiming that the entire Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, with all the months of attacks, dodges, and humiliations; with all the months of supposed "investigator" Kenneth Starr giving new meaning to the term "Star Chamber" with his ever-expanding claims of authority and lurid obsessions with stained dresses; with the civil suits, the depositions, the threats to criminally prosecute Clinton after he left office, the suspension of his law license, his impeachment and his trial before the Senate; that all of this was a plot by the Clintons to keep GOPpers from campaigning against "liberal overspending" in the 1998 off-year Congressional elections.
Seriously.
I tell you, that has got to be the single stupidest bit of supposed political analysis I have ever read.
Grover Norquist: You have become the absolute definition of clown.
Sources cited in links:
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2014/05/monica-lewinsky-conspiracy-theories-resurface-from-the-right-this-time/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Chamber
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