Analysis: Inconvenient Truths About Hillary's Misleading, Demagogic 'Wage Gap' Ad

Guy Benson | January 05, 2016 1:26 PM

As Republicans snipe at each other in a hotly-contested primary, Hillary Clinton has already pivoted toward November. Neither of Clinton's remaining Democratic challengers

are serious about beating her, a fact of which she's well aware. The party is shielding her from unwelcome exposure by doing everything within its power to limit and bury primary debates. Democrats have made their decision. The coronation is underway. In light of this reality, Hillary Clinton has turned her attention to running against a fractured GOP -- with an ostentatious nod to Bernie Sanders' class warfare motif, to shore up the left-wing base. Here's the decidedly general election-focused spot her campaign is running in Iowa and New Hampshire:

A few points:

(1) Republicans also favor tax cuts for the middle class -- and all hardworking taxpayers.

(2) It's quite something to be lectured about America's rich/poor gap by a multimillionaire who routinely fetched upwards of $300,000 and higher per speaking engagement (the Clintons have taken in $139 million in speaking income since 2001), and who made demands about the minimum size of private jets on which she'd deign to travel. This is the same woman whose

slush fund "charity" was awash in undisclosed foreign cash, and whose husband raked in enormous speaking fees from parties who were actively lobbying the powerful federal agency she ran. And yes, in case you were curious, the Clintons have indeed employed elite accountants to help limit their own family's tax liability. Because they're so very concerned about the wealth gap, you see.

(3) Clinton's ad fails to mention that the "wage gap" cited (as calculated by a liberal think tank) was significantly larger at the conclusion of...Bill Clinton's eight-year presidency. It has also ballooned over the course of Barack Obama's tenure of profligate spending and tax hikes. It's almost as if harping on this gap is an envy-stoking talking point, as opposed to a meaningful policy indicator, or a metric by which Statist policies can be evaluated. Also, when you punish success by soaking the rich, "unintended" consequences often ensue.

(4) This spot ticks the "equal pay for women" box,

echoing a theme from a previous Hillary ad campaign. This issue obviously polls well, and Mrs. Clinton will rely heavily on a massive gender gap to win the presidency. What she'd prefer female voters not know is that the alarmist statistics that ostensibly illustrate this problem rely heavily on junk economics. And by her own clumsy, demagogic standards, Hillary Clinton has chronically and massively underpaid women -- in her Senate office, at her State Department, and even on her presidential campaign.

I'll leave you with Chris Christie's urgent appeal to Republican unity, warning that a splintered and embittered GOP would hand the keys to the White House to Hillary Clinton, with so much -- including the future of the judiciary -- at stake: