Talking Points Memo editor and publisher Josh Marshall sees a pattern of self-deception among Clinton-loathing conservatives. Marshall acknowledges that Bill and Hillary Clinton routinely “play close to the line” and “refus[e] to play by rules tighter than those applied to anyone else,” but argues that right-wingers fool themselves when they insist that behind those tendencies lies criminality.
“It's never enough for the Clintons' perennial critics to be satisfied with potential conflicts of interest or arguably unseemly behavior,” wrote Marshall in a Tuesday post. “It always has to be more. There have to be high crimes, dead people, corrupt schemes. And if they don't materialize, they need to be made up. Both because there is an organized partisan apparatus aimed at perpetuating them and because there is a right-wing audience that requires a constant diet of hyperventilating outrage from which to find nourishment.”
Marshall commented that “freak show conspiracy theories…inevitably bubble up around [the Clintons], a symbiotic embrace of grievance, aggression and derp. It's painful to admit, but the two sides feed on each other.”
