Some Guy ........... ?! .... !!!!! :
http://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-rakes-the-clinton-muck-1464302380" Trump Rakes the Clinton Muck "
" The Clintons have never run into a foe willing to go where this one goes—gleefully. "
By
Kimberley A. Strassel
" If the political class had a theme song, it would be that old Toby Keith tune, “I Wanna Talk About Me.” Donald Trump knows the feeling, though of late he has been focusing on others. He wants to talk about Bill. He wants to talk about Hillary. He wants to talk about the 1990s, and Vince Foster, and Juanita Broaddrick.
He wants to talk about things that could help him win an election.
That Hillary Clinton today has a shot at the White House comes down to one reality: People forget. This is a politician utterly defined by scandal, and with more baggage than the carousels at Dulles International. She ought to be disqualified. And yet the Clintons thrive, the beneficiaries of forgetfulness. They’ve spent decades bulling through their messes, blaming their woes on right-wing plots, and depending on a fickle press and a busy nation to lose interest in their wretchedness. It works every time.
Yet Mr. Trump has a way of disrupting the status quo. He does this in part by behaving in ways most politicians wouldn’t or couldn’t. Unlike Republicans who may be wary of resurrecting the Clinton past, for instance, Mr. Trump is not afraid of being labeled “obsessive.” But there is usually a method to his madness. And his current let’s-campaign-like-it’s-1999 strategy has purpose—it’s part offense, part defense.
On offensive, Mr. Trump’s goal is to play off the soaring distrust Americans have in Mrs. Clinton by tying the past to the present. He wants voters to realize that the Whitewater land deal and Paula Jones aren’t dusty, closed chapters in the Clintons’ history. They are, rather, markers on a long continuum, one that begins with young Bill’s draft-dodging and continues today with mature Hillary’s private-email-server deletions and Clinton Foundation money-grubbing. And those scandals would accompany the Clintons back to the White House and define the next eight years, a prospect that Mr. Trump hopes will depress the entire nation.
“[W]hether it’s Whitewater or whether it’s Vince or whether it’s Benghazi. It’s always a mess with Hillary,” said Mr. Trump in a recent interview.
The Clintons will claim that nobody cares. It’s also possible that younger Americans—some of whom were in diapers during the Clinton administration—can’t figure out why people are suddenly talking about blue dresses. Still, give Mr. Trump marks for doing more than any politician in recent memory to educate. The newspapers are suddenly brimming with synopses of Filegate, Chinagate, Travelgate, cattle futures, the Marc Rich pardon, Kathleen Willey and White House looting.
Which is also part of the Trump offense: Energizing GOP base voters. Older Republicans in particular remain frustrated that the Clintons have never been held to account, and that the media so easily lost interest in the scandals. So to hear a Republican nominee take it to the Clintons—and on the sort of bare-knuckle terms that only they understand—is exciting.
Mr. Trump’s hits about the 1990s are also defensive moves, against what might otherwise be Mrs. Clinton’s biggest strength—the “women’s issue.” Democrats have used the “war on women” theme against Republicans for more than a decade, and for the most part successfully. Mrs. Clinton is already playing the women’s card, accusing Mr. Trump of insulting women. His response goes like this: “You want to talk about women? Awesome. Let’s talk about Bill.”
His ad on Instagram, featuring Bill Clinton chomping on a cigar, with the voices of women describing his unwanted sexual advances in the background, along with an ominous Hillary cackle, was a study in full-throttle bluntness.
You can debate whether Mr. Trump, given his colorful past, has much of a leg to stand on here. But the point is that the Clintons are, if anything, worse. What’s Hillary going to do? Defend Bill? That might not go over well with women, including survivors of sexual assault, who, Mrs. Clinton said last year, “have the right to be heard . . . the right to be believed.” So far Mrs. Clinton has been forced to sit silent, gritting her teeth as the media run fresh interviews with Mrs. Broaddrick, who says that Mr. Clinton raped her in 1978 when he was the Arkansas attorney general.
Mrs. Clinton now knows that attacking Mr. Trump about women will invite a counterattack from him citing Paula Jones, another of Bill’s accusers. So perhaps Mrs. Clinton will lay off that front. Which is Mr. Trump’s goal. He’s playing for a draw on this issue.
Does Mr. Trump’s Bad Bill approach risk making Mrs. Clinton look like a victim? It might, if this were the 1990s, and she were still viewed as the victim of a philandering husband. But Hillary has spent the past 16 years embracing her womanizer, using his fame and fortune to bolster her presidential run. And this is the woman who, according to her longtime friend Diane Blair, railed that Monica Lewinsky was a “narcissistic loony-tune.” It’s hard to feel sorry for a woman willing to blame her husband’s dishonor on a 22-year-old intern.
What matters most about this Trump strategy is that it’s a marker of what’s to come. The Clintons play hardball. Mr. Trump intends to play smashball. For them, that’s new. "
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