Every party partisan feels that an attack upon them is a "smear".
But attacks on the other party are all legitimate.
Partisan attacks will vary in how much meat they have, but all are politically motivated when pursued by the opposition.
But I can help your memory.....
- Watergate
- GW Bush National Guard service
- Sexist attacks on Sarah Palin (remember Democratic ally Larry Flynt's movie "Nail'n Palin") appear worse than any Democrat in memory has endured.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/11/beck.palin/index.html?iref=24hours
- Chris Christie & the Fort Lee lane closure
- John McCain citizenship
- Reagan is dumb
- Clarence Thomas hearings
Of course, Democrats will say that these weren't smear campaigns....they're about truth & justice!
I'm sure Republicans say the same thing about their attacks on Dems.
Okay, but looking at that list there are some legitimate differences.
-Watergate, involved definitive illegal activities.
-GWB National Guard Service, was a blip on the radar, but it was a media attack. It was largely in response to the Swiftboaters destruction of Kerry.
-Sarah Palin, Didn't even know about this at the time. No idea how bad it was politically. Flynt is a scum bag. What does his profiteering in the porn industry have to do with political smeer campaigns? I suppose you could call Flynn the media, but it's a stretch.
-Chris Christie, was a local issue. Probably the closest thing to a Clinton-esque scandal on the list. But it happened once. And his staffers were found guilty of wrongdoing. So there is a legitimate complaint.
-McCain, legitimate question... for idiots who don't understand the law. But unlike Obama, it was resolved by a few news stories explaining the situation.
-Reagan, a bit before my time. This sounds like a media attack. I can't imagine the FBI investigating his intelligence.
-Clarence Thomas, these I remember. And I remember it being a legitimate complaint about unlawful conduct. There was no investigation, it came out in his confirmation hearings.
I don't see any of them as the same. A laundry list of federal investigations, at a cost of close to a hundred million, spearheaded by republicans, to destroy the credibility of the opposition.
Most of these were media stories. The only two that involved investigations were Watergate and Chris Christie. The Christie scandal definitely had legitimate complaints at it's core. Staffers were found guilty. This was not a case of speculation, the rules were broken, the only question was whether Chistie knew about it. Watergate had eyewitness testimony to the fact that they broke the law. Something they have never had with the Clintons. Every investigation I can think of was brought on by speculation of what people (usually on the right) thought might be going on.
I know you are going to say, "see I told you, you don't see these as a smear". But some of them I do. The difference is clear. I still can't think of a single case on the right where multiple investigations have been conducted on so many fronts with so little evidence. The media goes after everyone. That much is true. But this goes way beyond that.
