Contrast and Compare

Contrast and compare: the trained hamsters of the main stream media treatment of Rand Paul after his announcement as a candidate (among many) for the GOP presidential nomination and the treatment of Hillary Clinton after her announcement this past Sunday. Paul was immediately branded as "extreme" in some of his positions; he was asked detailed and substantive questions about a wide range of inflamatory topics, he was challenged on statements he made as a private citizen 10 year ago, he was criticized broadly for his prickly interaction with interviewers. All of that is fine, after all, he's running for president.

But now we come to Hillary. We learn from the trained hamsters that (1) Hillary calls her touring RV  "Scooby;" (2) that her road trip to Iowa is specifically designed to connect with middle class people; that the insipid photos of a smiling Hillary with a smiling young middle class family (babe in arms) are representative of the "new" Hillary, and (3) that she's having "fun," and that's a wonderful to see. She granted no interviews and the media was neither upset nor ready to comment on that fact. Hmmm.

It comes as no surprise that after a flurry of commentary on Hillary's mendacity with regard to her State Department emails and private server, the media is now ready to fall in line and aggressively support her presidential run. Since her announcement, there has been no push for facts, no questions that might make her uncomfortable, just a broad based list of he past positions (not accomplishments, just positions) and why those positions make he "well-qualified" to be president.

Bret Stevens comments on what he harshly labels the 'Clinton way of lying:'

Sometime in the 1990s I began to understand the Clinton way of lying, and why it was so successful. To you and me, the Clinton lies were statements demonstrably at variance with the truth, and therefore wrong and shameful. But to the initiated they were an invitation to an intoxicating secret knowledge.

What was this knowledge? That the lying was for the greater good, usually to fend off some form of Republican malevolence. What was so intoxicating? That the initiated were smart enough to see through it all. Why be scandalized when they could be amused? Why moralize when they could collude?

It always works. We are hardly a month past Hillary Clinton’s Server-gate press conference, in which she served up whoppers faster than a Burger King burger flipper—lies large and small, venial and potentially criminal, and all of them quickly found out. Emails to Bill, who never emails? The convenience of one device, despite having more than one device?

It doesn’t matter. Now Mrs. Clinton is running for president, and only a simpleton would fail to appreciate that the higher mendacity is a recommendation for the highest office. In the right hands, the thinking goes, lying can be a positive good—as political moisturizer and diplomatic lubricant.

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, the Clinton way is the Intersection of Alinsky and Machiavelli. You'd think that with almost seven years of experience with this type of politician, the trained hamsters would learn that violating the public trust and blatantly promoting a mendacious and malicious leader does the country no good. But that requires objectivity, and the trained hamsters have none. Looks like it's deja vu all over again.