Saturday, January 2, 2016

How The Clinton Campaign Can Shut Up Trump On "Sexism" and Bill. If They Want To.




Maybe the best thing for anyone to do who is a political opponent of Donald Trump is just let him talk.    There is a case to be made that the more Trump talks the more he is in the process of destroying the Republican party in the next election.  But lately Trump's comments about Bill Clinton and his accusations of "sexism" have, not surprisingly, gotten the most coverage by the news media which many find obnoxious. Both the statements and the coverage.




While there is a school of thought that says just ignore Trump politically,the "sexism" attacks has gotten so much air play and the media has gotten so obsessed with it, shutting up Trump up for good over his recent attacks on Bill Clinton and "sexism" might not be a bad thing. And there is a way to do it. If the Clinton campaign or a surrogate wants to. And it might be the best thing to do. 

One thing Trump or almost any media savvy person knows is that for the most part mainstream journalists are no more than a collection of trained seals . They'll swallow whatever you throw them if everyone else is. And so Trump will continue  to bring up Lewinsky et al because he knows the media, especially cable news will keep swallowing. 

About  a year ago Rand Paul tried the same thing. It started with his wife attacking Bill Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky nonsense in an interview in Vogue and soon after, Rand Paul picked it up and ran with it accusing Clinton of "sexism" over Lewinsky and took up the Republican mantra which at the time was that Bill Clinton engaged in sexual harassment in the work place with " a female subordinate" and all they, the Republicans, were doing was standing up for moral principles and defending women's rights.  Which is a lot like the Republicans trying to close down Planned Parenthood and stop free mammograms and Pap smears by closing clinics and calling it the Women's Health and Safety Act.

I wrote a piece when Paul starting attacking Clinton over the Lewinsky thing making a couple of  points about the accusations Paul was making (all political obviously in trying to undermine Hillary Clinton's candidacy disguised as phony moral principle) and in the piece I dared Paul to address those points,  make some admissions and either put up or shut up. He shut up.

I can't claim with any certainty that it was the piece and the points I made that shut him up. After all I'm not MoveOn.Org who likes to take credit for the sun coming up , ("thanks to you,  MoveOn member because of our petition of 28,000 signatures even if it is out of a membership of 8 million,  demanding that the sun come up at 7:12 am on Thursday which we left on a beach in East Hampton, the sun did  come up at 7:12 which shows  what we can accomplish by sticking  together".)  So I have no proof that it was the piece that shut him up. Only that he did shut up soon after publishing the piece and he hasn't brought it up since.

The points were these:

The "sexism" attack on Clinton which is what Republicans used against Bill to impeach him along a party line vote in the House and which Trump has decided to run with,  and which Rand Paul used was that as a White House intern, Lewinsky was "a female subordinate in the work place" and that Clinton having an affair with her amounted to workplace sexual harassment and sexism. Never mind that it was Lewinsky who started it and made all the overtures.  Republicans said it was sexism and harrassment because Clinton was a man in a powerful position taking advantage of a female subordinate in the workplace to go along with the moral lapse of being unfaithful to his wife. Which according to them and Rand Paul a year ago, and now Trump, made Bill Clinton morally "unfit" to be in the White House.

But if Trump, like Paul, is going to attack Bill over Lewinsky, for "sexism" based on having
an affair with "a female subordinate in the workplace" and the moral lapse of being unfaithful, making Bill morally "unfit" to be in the White House (thereby disqualifying Hillary) then Trump has to say the same thing about General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who, when he was Supreme Allied Commander during WWII and planning the D-Day invasion in London had a long time affair affair with Kay Summersby, a  female British military attache who had the rank of Captain,  who was assigned to Eisenhower as his aide, and personal driver.

Since morality makes no distinctions Trump should be forced  by a Clinton campaign surrogate  to apply the same moral principle to Eisenhower and Eisenhower's workplace affair with a female subordinate  and force Trump to state that it made Eisenhower unfit to be Supreme Allied Commander, unfit to been involved in the planning of the D-Day invasion, unfit to have ordered the D-Day invasion and unfit to have been elected president of the United States because of his affair with Summersby, a "female subordinate in the workplace" and force Trump to also call Eisenhower  an " abuser" based on Trump's idea of morality that he wants to apply to Bill Clinton.

And as uncomfortable and campaign ending as it would be, Trump also has to make the same charge against Martin Luther King. We know, thanks to the FBI illegally wiretapping hotel rooms where King stayed, that King also had an affair with a young civil rights worker, " a female subordinate". So  Trump should be forced to apply his principle of "sexism"  to King too and and be forced to state that it made King unfit to lead the civil rights movement, unfit to have a memorial in Washington D.C.  and while he's at it let Trump criticize the New York City School Board for naming a public school after King. And lobby congress to rescind Martin Luther King Day and call King an "abuser".

The moral principles that Trump and other Republicans have tried to use against Bill Clinton to define someone as being "unfit"  for office and according to Trump an " abuser" is the same that can be applied to Eisenhower and King (and throw in FDR and JFK for good measure ) . And force  Trump to say so.  If Trump won't,  accuse Trump of being an intellectually dishonest moral hypocrite and political opportunist whose word and principles are worthless and are designed only for his own political ambitions. 

Let Trump be the one who needs to be very careful. If he keeps up the sexism attacks on Bill someone needs to  challenge  him to either put up or shut up on Eisenhower and King. 

It shut Rand Paul up. It will shut up Trump.

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