It didn't take long

Joe Conason writes that The hunting of the president resumes Salon 12/12/08.

Many of the same ugly actors that did so much to give us the Torture and Preventive War and Surveillance State of Dick Cheney and George W. Bush are hard at work to bring it back in 2012:

The madness that was eventually classified under the quasi-clinical rubric of "Whitewater" began, in no small degree, with the dubious idea that Arkansas, the Clintons' home state, was a peculiarly corrupt place -- and that any politician from Arkansas by definition was suspect (but only if he or she happened to be a Democrat).

Many of the familiar figures and institutions that should be permanently discredited by their roles in the Clinton drama have emerged again to smear Obama. Newsmax, the big right-wing Web site founded by Richard Mellon Scaife, sugar daddy of the Arkansas Project, dispatches daily news alerts with blaring headlines: "Obama Birth Certificate Battle Not Over" and "Obama, Blagojevich Tied to Same 'Godfather.'" Rush Limbaugh, who has never stopped hinting that the Clintons murdered Vince Foster, no matter how many investigations concluded that Foster's death was a tragic suicide, now wonders how Obama could be unaware of "all this stuff swirling around him."

The Clinton Rules, in other words, are back. Conason give Gene Lyons credit for the concept of the Clinton Rules, which can be easily summarized: You can say any dang fool thing you want, as long as you say it about the Clintons.

Of course, the Establishment press applied the Clinton Rules to Al Gore. Obama has so far been spared the full-blown Clinton Rules treatment. But that seems to be ending already.

Tags: barack obama,establishment press, mainstream media, mainstream press

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