Bush haters vs. Clinton haters

[Stoic]

To follow up on another thread.

Orcinus has a great take on the whole argument. Unfortunately, it's down the page and there's no way to link to it directly. I'll reproduce a part here, but do a search on "haters" in the page to get to the right spot.

"Those awful, mean 'Bush haters'
Saturday, August 23, 2003
Newspeak and doublethink, the totalitarian "reality control" devices that Orwell described so thoroughly in 1984, don’t always take the form of the simple messages that are common to it: "War Is Peace," "Ignorance Is Strength."

Its underlying principles, after all, are the interposition of two seemingly contradictory ideas or concepts and asserting that they are identical, thereby nullifying their meanings. This concept can apply to whole reconstructions of reality -- particularly in the rewriting of history that contravenes reality and substantive fact, asserting the opposite of that reality to be true, and offering distorted or utterly false evidence in support and asserting that it is true. The most notorious manifestation of this is Holocaust denial and similar forms of historical revisionism. A fairly clear recent example of this is Ann Coulter's attempts to rehabilitate the reputation of Joe McCarthy.

Rich Lowry of The National Review (which, of course, many of us recall was originally a McCarthyite rag closely associated with the John Birch Society) has been proving very adept at this sort of thing lately, which makes him our Newspokesman of the Week for this recent column:

Among the Bush haters

In the 1990s, a few lunatics accused President Clinton of murder and other crimes, leading to the coinage of the phrase "Clinton-hating." Thereafter, anyone who said a discouraging word about Clinton's sex-and-lies scandal, his slipperiness with the truth or his poor performance was tarred as a "Clinton-hater" and considered somehow illegitimate. The charge of Clinton-hating, constantly retailed by the media, became one of the most useful tools of the president's defenders.


Lowry is building on the "Bush haters are worse than Clinton haters" meme that is gaining great popularity among conservatives. Bob Somerby of the incomparable Daily Howler has already ripped a hole in the bow of the meme by demonstrating how Byron York's version of this thesis was built on false data. (Lowry gets dinged for repeating the falsehood.)

I also have to note that Lowry cites the "Bush Body Count" as an example of irrational "Bush hatred," which is probably true enough. But he conveniently neglects to mention that the "Bush Body Count" was directly inspired by (and in fact, at first was a parody of) the infamous "Clinton Body Count" that circulated among the Clinton-hating right for years, and indeed was touted by any number of mainstream conservatives over the years. (More about that in a moment.)

But even more significant is the way Lowry's version of events stands reality on its head. For most of the 1990s, Clinton-hating was an extraordinarily popular cottage industry that enjoyed wide circulation in the mainstream media, particularly on cable TV. And that cottage industry blossomed into the gigantic Republican Wurlitzer that continues to this day to devote the bulk of its energy to attacking liberals. The idea that it was ridiculed or suppressed in any fashion is laughable..."

[marshmellow]

1. A monster was created!

Clinton haters were nutured by hate radio shows that popped up as soon as Clinton was elected. Many were funded by republican operatives in the beginning. As a network of operatives began to move storylines in front of certain media groups for consumption, hate for clinton grew as the volume of clinton hate speech increased.

Bush haters are not the same at all. Bush haters have staked out their own position without any assistance from opinion pushers. Bush haters are people that have a gut feeling this guy is bad mojo. There is no national bush bashers on the radio each day. There are no daily stories about potential coverups, just the sense we are all being led to a place that will cost us dearly.

Bush haters are organic and clinton haters were fertilized.

[rock]

2. My take: it's the same reason

They both made the conservatives look bad.

[kentuck]

3. Those "few" hated him so much.....they were able to impeach him...

It was the whole damn Party!

[Kolesar]

4. The bush haters overlap to include about 5.5 Billion foreigners, too!

[Brotherjohn]

5. Bush-"hating" (if you want to call it that) starts with his policies.

That is legitimate ground.

Clinton-"hating" started with the man himself, and the fact that he was:
A) A Democrat who regained the WH for the first time in 12 years
B) An aging hippie / baby boomer. The first of his ilk to gain the WH, and the Repubs have NEVER gotten over the 60s

The criticism was of anything he would do, simply because of who the man was.

The best evidence of this is the fact that Bush and other conservatives can be "guilty" of many of the same things they accuse Clinton of, yet we don't hear a peep. Draft-dodging, drugs, covering up/being obtuse about one's past regarding such things... as one rightfully should be able to be, as it is one's personal past (they even coined a term about it... being "Clintonesque").

If "Bush-hating" was of the same nature as "Clinton-hating", the news would be harping every day about Bush's AWOL year, the allegations of paying for a girlfriend's abortion, cocaine use, starting a war for political reasons, and starting a war for a big, fat, quid pro quo to his biggest campaign contributors.

Besides all of this, whether "Bush-hating" is as bad as "Clinton-hating" doesn't change the fact that if it was good for the goose, it was good for the gander.

[grasswire]

6. please check my thread...

...where I have commented on this cynical strategy.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=243017

[farmbo]

7. The difference is simple: We use yardsigns; they use Grand Juries

The Clinton hating mob used scores of prosecutors, 100s of FBI and local investigators, and $70 million in taxpayer funds to try to hunt down Clinton.

Tha Bush "haters" (so called by RW media pundits) are using traditional political tools, attempting to unseat him at the ballot box (if we have one) in 2004.

There's no comparison. Rove is just trying to trivialize the deep and strident opposition to Bush* and his policies.

[Ernesto]

8. Yard sgns?

Not in my nieghborhood, unless you're into property repairs.