A prominent Republican with presidential aspirations is questioning the leadership qualifications of a Clinton because of an affair with Monica Lewinsky, while others in the GOP are talking impeachment.
1998? No, 2014.
In an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press on January 26, Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky recalled former President Bill Clinton’s sexual relationship with Lewinski, insisting that the affair calls into question the judgment of both Clintons: Bill and Hillary.
“One of the workplace laws and rules that I think are good is that bosses shouldn’t prey on young interns in their office,” Paul said. “And I think really the media seems to have given President Clinton a pass on this. He took advantage of a girl that was 20 years old and an intern in his office. There is no excuse for that, and it is predatory behavior.”
There’s no arguing that if a CEO of a large corporation were to have an adulterous affair with an intern barely past her teenage years and then lie about it and spend millions of other people’s money to cover it up, the media would persecute him and add the “predator” label to the talking points.
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Next, turning his sights on Hillary specifically, the potential presidential candidate asked rhetorically, “And then they have the gall to stand up and say Republicans are having a war on women? So yes,” continued Paul, “I think it’s a factor. It’s not Hillary’s fault, but it is a factor in judging Bill Clinton and history.”
With this kind of talk, it seems likely that the 2016 run for the White House will see hours of earned media spent rehashing the propriety of a powerful man taking sexual advantage of a young female employee and then having his wife “stand by her man.” While this might be hard for all of us to endure, it’s going to be especially hard on Hillary to reconcile her role in “exposing” the “war on women” with her role in protecting a husband who exposed himself to a young woman at work.
Impeachment of a Democrat President
On December 19, 1998, the House of Representatives impeached Bill Clinton on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. Two other charges — a second one of perjury and one for abuse of power — were laid against Clinton, but were not approved by the House. About two months later, Clinton was acquitted by the Senate.
Today, there are no salacious sex scandals to give the proposed impeachment charges against Barack Obama the sort of sexiness that would attract the attention of the mainstream media. This time, members of the House of Representatives are basing their charges solely on the many abuses of power perpetrated by the president.
Here’s the story so far as reported by The New American’s Jack Kenny:
The Republican congressman who walked out during President Obama’s State of the Union address January 28, Rep. Steve Stockman of Texas, has announced that he is considering filing articles of impeachment against the president.
“I could not bear to watch as he continued to cross the clearly defined boundaries of the Constitutional separation of powers,” Stockman said in a statement he issued following the president’s speech. He also posted the statement on his Senate campaign website, where he asked voters to register whether they are for or against impeaching the president.
“Obama defiantly vowed not only to radically expand the reach of government from cradle to grave, but to smash the Constitution’s restrictions on government power while doing it. His goal is to eliminate our constitutional republic,” Stockman said. “Last year I said I would consider impeachment as a last resort to stop Obama’s abuse of power. And, quite frankly, we’re running out of options.”
Representative Stockman’s source material — apart from the president’s own tyrannical behavior — is a book called Impeachable Offenses: The Case for Removing Barack Obama from Office by New York Times bestselling authors Aaron Klein and Brenda J. Elliott. The book is published by WND Books.
In this thorough though ignored chronicle of consolidation, the authors document in compelling detail the president’s “offenses against the Constitution,” including: “his assault on personal liberties; and his abuse of executive power to enact nation-altering policies without even minimal Congressional oversight.”
According to the publisher’s webpage, Impeachable Offenses “further exposes how Obama is aiding the enemies of the United States. From Benghazi through Obamacare through gun control, Fast and Furious and executive amnesty, this book presents hard-hitting new information that will have even the most skeptical of readers questioning the Constitutionality of Obama’s presidency.”
In an article by Diana West published on February 6, the Washington correspondent for Dispatch International cites chapter and verse of Obama’s sins against the Constitution and the rule of law:
What to do with a president who rewrites his own laws, enacts legislation that has failed (repeatedly) to pass into law and creates legislation through executive agency regulation? Obama has done all of the above, and more — for example, rewriting parts of Obamacare, implementing much of the repeatedly rejected Dream Act and creating cap-and-trade carbon restrictions, also rejected by Congress, through a web of EPA regulations. He promises to raise the minimum wage for federal workers and is reported to be exploring how to unilaterally lift sanctions on Iran. Just this week, head-spinningly, Obama lifted a ban on aliens who supported terrorists, thereby permitting them to enter the country. As for his promise that if you like your doctor, you can keep you doctor, that, we know, was pure fraud.
In his latest pronouncements about the power of his pen and the irrelevancy of Congress when it comes to making laws, the president has done little to get the stink of despot off himself. As Judge Andrew Napolitano recently wrote:
The Framers were so concerned with the potential of presidents to decline to enforce laws with which they disagreed that they inserted the word “faithfully” in the presidential oath when describing his enforcement obligations, and then they inserted the oath itself into the Constitution.
The inescapable conclusion from this is that the Framers intended American presidents to enforce all of the laws that Congress has written, even those they dislike, even those they condemn, even those that may frustrate their friends, even those that may harm their political interests.
If Representative Stockman and those who support his plan are successful, Barack Obama’s quest to consolidate all power in his own pen and in his own person may very soon be fatal to his political interests.
Clinton and Benghazi: A Serious Scandal
Despite the political points of similarity, 2016 will not be 1998 and Hilary Clinton, the early frontrunner for the Democratic nomination for president, has problems much more serious than a philandering, “predatory” husband: namely, Benghazi.
On January 15, the Washington Post — not exactly a conservative mouthpiece — printed an article entitled, “Can Hillary Clinton survive Benghazi?”
The question came after another story published in the Post on the same day declared: “Senate report: Attacks on U.S. compounds in Benghazi could have been prevented.” Among other things, the article revealed:
A long-delayed Senate Intelligence Committee report released Wednesday faulted both the State Department and the intelligence community for not preventing attacks on two outposts in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador, in 2012.
The bipartisan report laid out more than a dozen findings regarding the assaults on a diplomatic compound and a CIA annex in the city. It said the State Department failed to increase security at its mission despite warnings, and blamed intelligence agencies for not sharing information about the existence of the CIA outpost with the U.S. military.
William Jasper, senior editor of The New American, put a finer point on Clinton’s role in the murder of four U.S. embassy officials and 10 others at Benghazi:
The spontaneous riot narrative was also aimed at diverting attention from the fact that Secretary Clinton had failed to heed repeated warnings from Ambassador Stevens and State Department security personnel about the escalating danger in Benghazi and their appeals for additional security.
Her call to “stand down” will be a lot harder to explain than her decision to “stand by her man.”
A campaign season featuring House calls for impeachment and a Clinton who abuses power, lies about it, then forces others to do the same. Back to the future.
Photo of Hillary Clinton: AP Images
Joe A. Wolverton, II, J.D. is a correspondent for The New American and travels frequently nationwide speaking on topics of nullification, the NDAA, the Second Amendment, and the surveillance state. He is the co-founder of Liberty Rising, an educational endeavor aimed at promoting and preserving the Constitution. Follow him on Twitter @TNAJoeWolverton and he can be reached at [email protected].
