The Roots of Clinton Derangement Syndrome

Former Secretary Clinton's calm, measured and knowledgable appearance before the partisan Benghazi Benghazi! BENGHAZI! House Select Committee stood in stark contrast to the angry, disjointed and prosecutorial behavior of the Committee's Republican cohort. Aside from President Obama, who provokes their enmity for a range of other reasons (race being one), Hillary Clinton has always managed to press the right-wing's rage button. Why?  Adele Stan's article suggests that much of it goes to the right's antagonism to professional, breadwinning women like the former Secretary, who had her own successful career outside of the Arkansas Governor's mansion.

In the right-wing mind, there is nothing so ruinous to America as the liberation of women. The right’s entire ideological structure is built on worship of the Great White Father and veneration of the stern, Caucasian, disciplinarian dad. It’s a worldview centered on a jealous, blue-eyed Father God, a military dispatched to teach the world a lesson, and a president who serves as the national patriarch.

We've certainly seen over the past decades the clear bias of the right wing (Phyllis Schafly, anyone?) against women who choose both families and careers. We'd also propose some additional clues as to the right's Clinton Derangement Syndrome.

First, Hillary Clinton served on the professional Democratic staff of the Watergate Committee, something that the right will never forgive, even though their work rid the country of a truly bad guy. That doesn't matter to the right: Richard Nixon was their guy, the guy with an "R" next to his name.

Second, when Bill Clinton's star began to rise as the charismatic Governor of a southern state, he and Hillary ("you get two for the price of one") represented a mortal threat to the Republicans' "Southern Strategy," formulated by Nixon to peel conservative Dems and Dixiecrats off of the Democratic Party. The Rethugs saw their future viability rested in locking up the old Confederacy for the Republican Party, and this Democratic duo from the South had to be stopped. They weren't, and the Rethugs had to resort to a virtual Constitutional coup in the form of impeachment, which failed and resulted in greater public support for the Clintons. (Impeachment was also a neat form of indirect retaliation to Hillary Clinton for her service on the Watergate Committee).

Something to think about as the 2016 campaign season begins, and as the assault on the former Secretary continues unabated.