Godzilla, the monster mutation that radiation created, opens in theater today. But another monster drama, Hillzilla, started weeks ago in Washington. Now that Republicans have run out of Obamacare catastrophes to talk about, they’ve shifted their focus to Hillary Clinton.
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House Speaker John Boehner whipped together another committee to investigate Benghazi. And Karl Rove's assertion that Clinton might have brain damage was a reach even for him.
There’s only one reason for all of this conservative attention on Clinton: 2016.
Clinton hasn’t even said if she'll run for president, but the GOP has greased up the trash machine, just in case. They're worried.
And they should be; Clinton's a monster of a political opponent. Boehner hasn’t been able to get his troops to agree on anything, so they have no accomplishments to tout. Immigration reform, raising the minimum wage, and a jobs bill to rebuild the country’s infrastructure have taken a back seat to political theater.
Much of the Hillzilla hysteria is due to the Tea Party’s influence on the Republican Party. The ultra-conservative wing has pulled the party so far to the right of the electorate that passing new legislation, unless it’s designed to repress voting in minority communities, isn’t even a concern of Boehner’s anymore.
Scandals and investigations serve to drum up donations in both parties. But now smart, rational conservative candidates are too busy feeding a base with an insatiable appetite for anti-government anger to be relevant. It must feel odd to campaign to be part of the government that you say you hate so much.
But the recent attack from Rove may have caused former President Bill Clinton to spill the beans about his wife’s intentions. It may be reading too much into the former president’s loquaciousness, but in a recent
talk he kind of let the cat out of the bag.
And there are a lot of Dems out there who are happier because of it.