Last updated on September 25th, 2023 at 01:38 pm
While the RNC trolls Hillary Clinton with a squirrel, claiming there is ‘Hillary fatigue!’, reality bites them in the poll once again.
Republicans have been trying to sell ‘Clinton fatigue’ for years now, but really amped up their efforts this past month. RNC Chairman Reince Priebus has been comforting himself over the GOP’s stale, tired 2016 line up with the fantasy that the country is tired of Clinton, and that it would be “nuts” to have another Clinton in the White House.
“There’s Hillary fatigue already out there,” Priebus tried to sell recently on “Meet the Press.”
To this end, Priebus has had the RNC trolling former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on her book tour with a person wearing a bright orange squirrel costume. That will show ’em! This squirrel, like much of the GOP’s strategies, is a throwback – a redux. This is the squirrel who fear mongered about ACORN.
Perhaps Republicans spent so much dressing Sarah Palin they can’t afford a new troll costume, but the ACORN pimp outfit of their activist/criminal/lie-manufacturer was certainly a high point of the decade, costume-wise. It’s a shame to see that treasure go to waste.
It’s seemingly impossible to overestimate just how deeply Republicans can bury their heads in the sand. Remember, they really believed Mitt Romney had 2012 in the bag, and for a good two years they smugly told American TV audiences that the Obama voters had soured on him- they would not turn out the vote. They based this on the very loud objections of a small faction of the liberal base, who also identify as libertarian liberals, and who actually do not comprise the Obama base. See 2012.
Maybe Republicans can’t distinguish between the loudest faction and the control of the party base on the left because on the right, the loudest faction is driving the party. On the right, the Tea Party drives the platform, the policies, and too often the candidates. It was only through cheating that the GOP managed to get their man Romney past the turbulent primaries.
A June 17th Gallup poll showed reality to be the opposite of Republican fantasies, “Clinton Is Best Known, Best Liked Potential 2016 Candidate”:
Hillary Clinton is currently the best known and best liked of 16 potential 2016 presidential candidates tested in a July 7-10 Gallup poll, due to her 91% familiarity score and +19 net favorable rating. The net favorable is based on her 55% favorable and 36% unfavorable ratings.
No one on the Republican side can even touch these numbers right now. Hence, “Hillary fatigue!”
Because Republicans believe in fairy tales and fantasies, they believe that if they say something often enough, it will come true — like Dorothy clicking her heels together three times and saying “there’s no place like home!”, Republicans will find their way back to the heady days of Reagan by repeating “Hillary fatigue!” over and over again until the great Hillary Oz is revealed to be something entirely non-threatening. This scenario would only be believable had Hillary not been in public life previously, or if her profile was so low that Republicans could invent a new her.
But like the unskewed poll dreams of 2012, this is not likely to be. The fact of the matter is two of their top contenders, Governors Rick Perry and Chris Christie, are facing criminal investigations. Huckabee is a non-starter because if you peel that Fox onion, you get crazy. And that leaves Rand Paul and Paul Ryan. Rand Paul gets some of the same voters who cheered for Elizabeth Warren at Netroots, which says something about where Libertarians meet Liberals, but says nothing about the Democratic base. Rand Paul is also a racist and he can’t even handle an interview without crumbling. He only looks good from afar and in a unilateral situation. That leaves us Paul Ryan: The guy the Nuns protested; the guy who couldn’t do the math on his own budget; the guy whose budget took aim at all kinds of programs the GOP can’t admit to wanting to kill. If they run him, they risk running their actual agenda, and they can’t do that.
“Hillary fatigue!” is just another attempt to Karl Rove the strength of the Democratic opponent– to take her familiarity and strong positives and turn it into something to be used against her. Perhaps someone needs to replay the tape of Karl on Fox during the Ohio 2012 results for Priebus.
The messaging weapon of the GOP died when the Internet learned how to fact check in real time. There is no real and lasting “Hillary fatigue!” Do progressives dream of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders in the White House? Of course. But the Democratic base understands that even if they were to make it there, they would end up governing much like a Clinton or Obama, because of that pesky thing called checks and balances.
So dies another GOP fantasy. But shhhhh… Don’t tell them. They look so peaceful when they’re sleep-walking.
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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