Innoculation

by digby

Glenn Greenwald tells me that KellyAnn “I wish I were as cute as Ann Coulter” Conway and her little dog George have started a blog in which they are recapping the Cinton scandals for the folks. Glenn’s post does a smashing job of reminding us of the professional character assasins of the GOP, many of whom have been woefully underemployed since the GOP owns everything in town:

Examining filth-peddling relics of the 1990s like the Conways is not merely an exercise in masochistic nostalgia. As their new National Review blog demonstrates, lowly character smears are a quite current and integral weapon in the Republican arsenal. These gutter tactics and their vile purveyors haven’t gone anywhere. And it is beyond doubt that all of the Clinton smears which lowered our political discourse to the primordial level, along with many new ones, are being kept warming in the oven just in case Hillary gets anywhere near a Presidential election.

But the real reason to remember this despicable filth-peddling is because these same Republicans are being permitted by an amnesic and manipulated media to parade themselves around as the Paragons of Civility and Dignity. That Republicans can deliver dignity lectures to the media, which then dutifully reports them with a concerned face while repeatedly showing video of Sam Alito’s wife crying, is quite compelling evidence of just how wretchedly dishonest Republican moralizing is and, worse, how utterly dysfunctional our media has become.

There’s another reason they have trotted out the bitch-twins, as well. They are desperate to keep the public believing that the “culture of corruption” is bi-partisan. I have no doubt in my mind that Mighty Wurlitzer has employed Kellyanne and George for the specific purpose of recycling smears from the 90’s (that can be helpfully passed on to the right wing blogs, talk radio and TV pundits) in order to “remind” people how corrupt Democrat Clinton was. Look for the Conway crap to show up in the blogosphere before long and soon in the major media. We should be prepared for it.

In some ways, the Clinton scandals of the 90’s can be seen as innoculation for the Republican corruption that was rampant, even then. We all know that the charges against the Clinton administration were bullshit, but the non-stop pounding for eight long years is one of the main reason why the public sees corruption as bi=partisan in Washington today. They’ve been hearing about scandals pretty much non-stop for the last 14 years. I don’t believe this is an accident. These people are very good at this stuff. And we are very bad at seeing it coming.

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