Welcome to the 1990s Version 2.0

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Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the pride of Bakersfield and most likely our next Speaker of the House, was on Sean Hannity’s show last night. He assured Hannity that he would be a conservative speaker with a strategy to fight and win:

“And let me give you one example. Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee. A select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable. But no one would have known that any of that had happened had we not fought to make that happen.”

That appears to be a reference to Clinton’s private server email woes.

Ya think? Benghazi is the modern version of Whitewater. I think everyone knows perfectly well that there’s nothing there and never has been, but it gives Republicans an institutional base to issue subpoenas and basically poke into anything that might hurt Hillary. Just as Whitewater led to Filegate led to the blue dress, Benghazi has led to emailgate, and from there, who knows? But obviously Republicans are hoping that if they just keep the investigation going, eventually they’ll get their blue dress.

It’s worth remembering just how much of the Whitewater investigation was aimed at Hillary back in the day. There were times when she took more hits than Bill. The press played along then, and they’re playing along now. In both cases, there was genuine news that justified a certain amount of coverage. But also in both cases, the amount of coverage was insanely out of sync with the actual evidence of serious wrongdoing. Welcome to the 1990s version 2.0.

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