The New York Times Documents the GOP's Latest Brands of Sexist 'Hillary Hating'

By Clay Waters | January 24, 2015 | 10:25 PM EST

New York Times reporter (and the paper's chief Hillary Clinton follower) Amy Chozick made an indignant defense of the Democratic front-runner in 2016 on Saturday: "Clinton Opponents Hone New Barbs and Attacks as 2016 Campaign Nears."

Chozick highlighted the article with a vivid description on Twitter (emphasis added): "The cottage industry of Hillary hating has never gone out of business, but it has evolved with the times."

Her Saturday article dripped with sarcasm straight from the lead:

First, she was called the bra-burning feminist with a degree from Wellesley. Then, she was the aggressively political spouse from Arkansas who plotted behind closed doors. Today, she is the millionaire elitist who socializes in New York City and the Hamptons.

Few modern political figures inspire the animus that Hillary Rodham Clinton generates, and the cottage industry that opposes her never really goes out of business. But as Mrs. Clinton prepares for a likely presidential campaign in 2016, the sprawling network is evolving to attack her on new grounds.

The Times must have blanked out on the eight years President George W. Bush was referred to as Hitler by the tolerant, open-minded left.

There are “super PACs” with names like Women Against Hillary, Just Say No to Hillary, Stop Hillary and Defeat Hillary. The Republican National Committee recently introduced a website PoorHillaryClinton.com, which mocks Mrs. Clinton’s wealth.

While all politicians endure scrutiny and efforts by the other side to define them, the attacks on Mrs. Clinton often take on a personal tone, which her defenders say is driven by an electorate still coming to terms with the possibility of a female president.

But the message against Mrs. Clinton before 2016 is shifting, highlighting new, less gender-based attacks than those leveled during the 2008 campaign. She is no longer caricatured as the embodiment of a 1960s feminist pushing her husband’s administration to the left. Instead, Mrs. Clinton is criticized as overly cautious and centrist and out of touch with average Americans. Last summer she said that her family was “dead broke” upon leaving the White House, yet she has made millions off her books and is paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for speeches.

....

There is no question that Mrs. Clinton, after two decades in public life, remains divisive: 50 percent of voters have a favorable opinion of her, and 45 percent have an unfavorable opinion, according to a Quinnipiac University poll conducted in November.

....

David Brock, founder of Correct the Record, a project that defends Mrs. Clinton in the news media, and a onetime conservative critic of the Clintons, published the e-book “The Benghazi Hoax” in 2013 that defends Mrs. Clinton’s handling of the attack on the United States Mission in Benghazi, Libya.

He said criticism that she is wealthy and out of touch would be an easy one to combat, particularly if the Republican nominee is Jeb Bush, the son and brother of former presidents, or Mitt Romney, whose personal wealth became a point of contention in his 2012 campaign and who recently told donors that he was considering running again in 2016.

It was not long ago that conservatives were “raising money off the caricature of her as a dyed-in-the-wool socialist,” Mr. Brock said.

“Now, we’re expected to believe a totally contrary fictional premise -- that she’s a plutocrat,” he added.

Chozick piled on the "conservative" labels.

The fight to define, or redefine, Mrs. Clinton will become only more intense. For Republicans, the attacks not only excite the conservative base, but they can help shape a narrative to weaken Mrs. Clinton’s chances with the broader electorate.

Citizens United, a conservative advocacy group that produced the 2008 anti-Clinton documentary “Hillary: The Movie,” has another documentary in preproduction set to premiere during the 2016 campaign. That film will mostly focus on Mrs. Clinton’s career as a New York senator through her time as secretary of state, and will look at the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation.

In August 2012 Chozick nodded along respectfully to President Obama's party-hack lecture of the political press corps for questing after "false balance," a phrase Democrats use to pressure reporters not to cover conservative ideas they consider too ridiculous to contemplate.

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Senator Hillary Clinton

Amy Chozick