"Look, if we had a Clinton presidency, if we had Erskine Bowles as chief of staff of the White House or president of the United States, I think we would have fixed this fiscal mess by now."
-- Paul Ryan (R-WI) about Hillary Clinton on Meet the Press
Sometimes I think the Republicans in Congress can't shock me by their utterly laughable, teeth-gnashing, shameless hypocrisy. But then they outdo themselves. I get the sense that some of these people sit in a room and play a game to see which one will be able to say the most unbelievable thing that no one else in the circle can even get out of their mouth, and the winner gets to say it in public. (Or maybe it's that the loser has to.)
Republicans hate Hillary Clinton. They hate her so irrationally that they tried to paint her as a murdering lesbian harridan. The mere mention of Hillary Clinton's name at 500 paces can get the head of many Republicans to explode. There is only one person Republicans have hated this long more than Hillary Clinton.
And that is Bill Clinton. For goodness sake, they hate him so irrationally they impeached the guy. They hate Bill Clinton so much that they actually did create a "vast right-wing conspiracy" to destroy him in every way possible. And yet he left office with an approval rating of 68 percent. And that made them hate him even more.
And then, during the recent presidential election, Republicans lionized Bill Clinton. They put him on a pedestal up with Abraham Lincoln.
"Clinton was trying to move the party to the center," former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-AA) said in praise.
John McCain (R-AZ) fawned over the guy. "President Clinton -- who took military action to stop ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, and who did so in Kosovo without a U.N. Security Council mandate -- ultimately understood..."
"Obviously President Bill Clinton gets it," lauded Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX)
When the Republican standard-bearer, Mitt Romney (R-MA) lost the election, the person he quoted to defend himself, to relate how good he was, to explain that his loss was only an accident -- was Bill Clinton.
I spoke with President Clinton the day before yesterday, he called and spent 30 minutes chatting with me. He said a week out I thought you were going to win. And he said, but the hurricane happened, and it gave the president a chance to be presidential, and to look bipartisan, and you know he got a little more momentum, and of course he also said that when he was watching Ann speak at the Republican convention, he decided he was tempted to join the Republican Party.
Yes, Republicans now supposedly love Bill Clinton so much that they want him to be a Republican!
And Republicans are saying, now, that the hated, evil queen Hillary Clinton -- the person they believe is likely going to be the Democratic candidate for president in 2016 -- is so absolutely incredibly wonderful, that she could solve the economic crisis caused by George W. Bush. And... AND... she could do it with Erskine Bowles -- who had been the Chief of Staff for... Bill freaking Clinton!
And that's because there is one person they irrationally hate more than they irrationally hate Bill Clinton and irrationally hate Hillary Clinton. And that's Barack Obama.
Republicans will say almost literally anything to try to irrationally demean President Barack Obama. Nazi Socialist anti-American radical Kenyan who wants to kill old people. It's as if the thought process has turned off. It doesn't matter if it makes no sense. It doesn't matter if it contradicts everything they've stood for in their entire life. It doesn't matter if it's such a ghastly hypocritical lie that when you tried to get into heaven God Himself would meet you at the gate and push St. Peter aside to say, "Hold on, you have got to be kidding me. No way. Down there."
And so now, Paul Ryan, the losing Republican candidate for vice president, thinks so little of Americans that he's willing to sell his soul and say that a Clinton presidency with Erskine Bowles would have fixed the Bush-created financial crisis.
The same night, that very same Hillary Clinton and very same President Barack Obama appeared on 60 Minutes and explained that they had such a difficult time debating each other in the 2008 primaries specifically because they agreed so closely on almost everything! And Paul Ryan -- now -- wants Americans to believe that he believes that President Hillary Clinton would fix the fiscal crisis. Doing, likely, exactly the same thing Barack Obama is doing.
No wonder he lost.
And by the way, none of this addresses that any Democratic president would have to get her or his economic policies past the same Republican Congress, which votes unanimously "no" on virtually everything. Unless, that is, Mr. Ryan is acknowledging that Republicans are consistently voting "no" against Barack Obama purely because he is Barack Obama. Not because of his policies, which would be almost exactly the same as those of Hillary Clinton, by their own acknowledgement.
I would say that Republicans have reached a low in pathetic, self-serving, lying hypocrisy. But I have confidence in them. I know they can go lower.
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To read more from Robert J. Elisberg about this or many other matters both large and tidbit small, see Elisberg Industries.