"This vast right-wing conspiracy," Hillary Clinton said, "has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced." That was the "feminist" first lady's response when her husband was accused of having sex with a 21-year-old.
Bill was more lawyerly. He said things like, "It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is."
The Wall Street Journal's Kim Strassel suggests that the Clintons must have a Scandal Manual: "The standard operating procedure never changes."
Forty years ago, Hillary would have us believe that she wasn't just the wife of a man running for Arkansas governor -- she was a lucky or brilliant investor who in less than three weeks doubled her money. No, tripled! No, wait -- quadrupled ... no, actually, much more!
"Clinton made almost $100,000 in the cattle futures market," reported Tom Brokaw, and "many wondered whether that was a sweetheart deal arranged for the governor's wife."
Of course it was.
In less than three weeks, Hillary turned $1,000 into $16,427. "I don't understand how that could have possibly occurred," she said. "My husband and I missed the fact that we had actually made some money."
A hundred thousand dollars -- twice what her husband made as governor. Who remembers trivia like that?
That was around the time of the Whitewater scandal, in which friends of the Clintons got sweetheart land deals. Seven people went to jail, but not the Clintons. Their records disappeared.
Hillary came on "20/20." Barbara Walters asked her, "How did you get into this mess where your whole credibility is being questioned?"
Hillary answered sweetly, "I ask myself that every day, Barbara, because it's very surprising and confusing to me."
It is confusing to me, too.
Travelgate and Fostergate were also confusing, as is the Democrats' sudden indifference to a president getting oral sex from an intern, deaths in Benghazi and, most recently, violation of State Department email rules.
"It would've been better for me to use two separate phones and two email accounts," Hillary testified. "I thought using one device would be simpler."
Except it turned out she did use two devices: "iPhone, OK, in full disclosure, and a Blackberry."
She also said, "I took the unprecedented step of asking that the State Department make all my work-related emails public."
Except that wasn't true either. She turned over only emails she claimed were relevant. The rest were wiped clean from her home server -- a private server government officials aren't supposed to use. Then she refused to give that server to a third party for an independent review.
Consequences? Punishment? No.
New revelations in the book "Clinton Cash" about the Clinton Foundation accepting billions from foreign governments and people doing business with our government brought out the same "Aw, shucks" replies from the Scandal Manual.
Bill told a reporter, "I asked Hillary about this, and she said, 'No one's ever tried to influence me.'"
Anyway, the Foundation money went to charity. Hillary said, "I am very proud of the work the Foundation does."
But what "work"? In 2013, a measly 9 percent of the money went to charity! Charity Navigator, the biggest charity rating service, won't even list the Clinton Foundation in its rankings. This is repulsive. If a Republican candidate ran a charity that did that, it would be a scandal. But the Clintons must be immune.
Brian Williams "misremembers" his helicopter coming under hostile fire and loses his job. But Hillary says, "I remember landing under sniper fire ... we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles." That was total fabrication, but when Hillary was caught, she just told reporters it was a "minor blip."
"I say a lot of things -- millions of words a day -- so if I misspoke, that was just a misstatement."
Misstatement? I call it a self-promoting lie. But the Clintons are Teflon. In the presidential race, Betfair lists Hillary as the overwhelming favorite.
"Political language," George Orwell wrote, "is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."
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