Death of a thousand cuts part Deux
Posted: Sun Jul 26, 2015 7:44 am
A while back I posited that Hillary would not be the nominee. Here are a few more tidbits to chew on.
The fat lady is going to sing.
If Hillary Clinton were a cartoon character, she’d be Snidely Whiplash, forever muttering to herself, “Curses, foiled again.” And she’d be right.With Valerie Jarrett against you, who could be for you?
The lady in waiting will have to keep waiting. Probably forever. Fate has spoken.
Already threatened by a growing trust deficit with voters, her would-be majesty now faces an even more lethal adversary. It’s called the truth, though she probably sees it as a vast, left-wing conspiracy.
The news that two inspectors general from the Obama administration want the Justice Department to investigate her handling of classified material is a potential game changer. For many Democrats, it will serve as final proof she is fatally flawed.
Her standing will further erode, turning her coronation plans into a long, hot summer. The drip, drip, drip of details will produce new polls showing a bleeding of support, which will entice other candidates into the race. Look for Vice President Joe Biden to jump in soon, and lefty Sen. Elizabeth Warren might also take the leap.
Meanwhile, Clinton must play defense against her former colleagues in the State Department and intelligence agencies.
Actually, it’s worse. She’s almost certainly up against the White House.
Somebody very high in the food chain leaked the memos requesting the probe. The New York Times, which broke the story, identified its source only as “a senior government official.”
My money is on Valerie Jarrett, the Obamas’ Rasputin, who is known to despise Clinton. If it was Jarrett, she would not do this against the president’s wishes.
That also would be true for any “senior government official” who leaked the memos. Targets don’t get any bigger than Hillary Clinton, so this was not a rogue operation. This was an approved hit.
Clinton has an enemies list — and it looks like she’s on Obama’s. It’s also possible the White House is using the issue to keep her in line on the Iranian nuke deal. The implied threat is “look what happened to Robert Menendez.”
Either way, she had it coming. Her arrogance and bald-face lies about the e-mails must have infuriated her boss and colleagues. Her decision to conduct government business on a private server in her home and use personal e-mail accounts was a giant “f–k you” to the administration.
When it was revealed in March that she had deleted tens of thousands of e-mails before turning over those she deemed government property, she compounded injury with an insulting insistence that she did nothing wrong. Insiders knew that was a big fat lie.
As I wrote then, Clinton’s claim that she acted out of “convenience” was hogwash. She wanted to keep her correspondence secret from Congress, the media — and also from the White House, and the people it stashed at State to watch her.
It’s obvious now she underestimated the ammunition she was providing. As a result, she has put her dream of being the second President Clinton in mortal jeopardy.
And her problems may not end with the classified issue. Any honest prosecutor looking at her e-mails would also look for evidence she traded government favors for contributions to the Clinton Foundation or paid speeches.
She and Bill Clinton were paid $25 million for speeches in just 16 months, and some of that cash came from donors and companies with business before her. Similarly, big donors to the foundation also sought help from her as secretary.
There is also serious suspicion about some payments made by foreign governments and foreign companies. Ericsson, the Swedish conglomerate, paid Bill Clinton $750,000 for a speech as it was lobbying to avoid America’s penalties for doing business with Iran, according to The Washington Times.
One place to look for information on any conflicts of interest, or worse, would be the 30,000 e-mails Clinton said she withheld on the grounds they were “personal.” She said she deleted them and her lawyer, trying to shut the door on Congress, added that the server was “wiped clean.”
That’s not something anyone will ever say about Hillary Clinton’s reputation. And now a career marked by persistent dishonesty might be nearing the finish line long before she planned.
The arc of her life demonstrates that the greatest threat was never someone on her enemies list. It was always the woman in the mirror.
The fat lady is going to sing.