Even stopped clocks are right sometimes, and even Donald Trump is capable of doing something to actually help the Republican Party. He did so recently when he leveled a broadside at both of the Clintons that for the first time in ages drew blood. Due just to him, a whole new generation is learning the names of Paula Jones, Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey and why they may matter. Clinton apologists say these attacks always fail, but this time seems different. And here are the four reasons why.
1. Wisely, Trump focused wholly on what may be criminal matters — groping a volunteer aide in the White House, physical rape of a business acquaintance and exposing himself to a state employee at a state conference — while leaving the consensual-sex-unfaithful-spouse aspect alone. Arguments can be made that private affairs should stay private; that many adulterers have been fine public servants; and that if a spouse accepts it, then so should the country. But no one suggests that abuse of a third party is something a spouse can forgive.
2. Hillary the wronged wife becomes the aggressor, abetting and aiding the defamation of women, while defending her spouse and political patron, on whom her own power depends.
3. The Bill Cosby effect has bled into Bill Clinton, showing that an avuncular image can mask a much darker reality.
And 4. The “campus rape epidemic,” endorsed by most feminists, has boxed in the Democrats, who must square their support for female accusers on campus with their dismissal of victims of Bill. Can they support Mattress Girl and dismiss Mrs. Broaddrick? Will Gloria Steinem announce a “one free rape” exception for pro-choice male Democrats? Trump “has a point about Clinton playing the ‘woman’s card,'” writes Ruth Marcus, reluctantly. “Bill Clinton’s conduct toward women is far worse than any of the multiple offensive things that Trump has said.”
But this is really a very old story for Democrats, who have been facing the problem of feminist lechers since before the Clintons arrived. There was Ted Kennedy, who left a woman to drown, assaulted a waitress, and was involved in his nephew’s rape trial, while his staff made the case that Clarence Thomas, accused without proof of having said something, was a monster unfit for the Supreme Court.
There was Gary Hart, until he went sailing. There was Bob Packwood, the exceedingly pro-choice Republican, whose many assaults were concealed by his almost entirely feminist victims while his votes were needed, and who was tossed overboard — after all, he was a Republican — at the very first moment this ceased to be true. The difference was that none of these people had wives who were fiercely ambitious feminist harridans, set on becoming the first woman president, who planned to campaign as the savior of women in general while running around and/or over any or all of the many particular women who might interfere with her plans.
It was Hillary Clinton’s bad luck that the political talent she tied herself to was a man given to not taking “no” for an answer. But it was her bad judgment that when trouble occurred she chose not to deal with the source of the problem, but to clear the victims of her husband’s transgressions as quickly as possible out of the way. This is a secondary sin, but one for which she is paying, as her acts contradict her own stated reason for running, which is that women victims of sexual violence should insist that their cases be heard. It is this contradiction that Trump has laid open. And for which he merits our thanks.
Noemie Emery, a Washington Examiner columnist, is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and author of “Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families.”
