By John Brummett

The Clinton cultists are out in full force, making it apparent that their fealty to those famously self-indulgent political creatures - Bill and Hillary - exceeds any ideology or principle.

These are the same fervent apologists who said it was all right to lie under oath because the question was nobody’s business. People lie under oath all the time, they explained.

We have a disproportionate number of these Clinton cultists in Arkansas. That’s because some people choose to embrace this man and woman no matter what, and do so simply on the basis that they have a personal acquaintance.

As political thinkers, these Clinton cultists are the equivalent of Razorback football fans.

And, believe me, I hear from them.

Lately they defend the Clintons’ blatant distortions of Barack Obama’s simple historical observations a couple of weeks ago. You recall what Obama said: Ronald Reagan’s presidency was transformational in that it changed American politics, and the Republicans have dominated in recent years in the arena of ideas.

Bill, Hillary and their people claimed that Obama had praised Reagan, even expressed love for him, and had embraced what he called "better" Republican ideas.

Obama had done none of that.

The Clinton cultists say Obama knew what he was doing when he took an implicit shot at Bill Clinton in those remarks. They say Obama knew what he was doing when he threw Clinton and Richard Nixon into the same sentence as presidents not transformative like Reagan.

Obama was asking for it, and he got it, they say.

Lies equate with pointed facts - shall we call that the Clinton Cultists’ Law of Symmetry?

By the way, these cultists hasten to add that the Republicans would dish out far worse should Obama get the nomination.

The Clintons took slime from Republicans for 15 years, you see. So they’re entitled to give Obama an instructive little dose, you see.

That seems to be the universal Clintonian argument. It addresses all things but one, truth.

Some of these Clinton cultists profess to be progressive, even liberal. But their devotion is to these two personalities, not tenets. They’re not Democrats so much as Clintonists. They’re not so much liberals as homers.

It always comes back to this: Whatever you accuse Bill and Hillary of, or fault them for, gets dismissed by Clinton defenders on the argument that we should consider the broader context in which the Clintons took heaps of Republican abuse and are no worse than anybody else in politics.

Minor example: A Hillary loyalist the other day at the civic club wanted me to review a tape of Obama’s speaking in Dr. Martin Luther King’s Atlanta church. This man wanted me to notice how Obama was changing his cadence to Southernize it with drawn-out syllables.

People always ridicule Bill and Hillary for doing that, the man said. But, look, he said, Obama did it, too.

So what was the man’s point?

Was it that we should vote for Hillary because Obama appeared in at least one case to be as phony as she? Was it that we must bring down to the Clintons’ size any who might profess to be nobler?

Yes, apparently.

On Tuesday, well more than half the Arkansas Democratic primary participants will surely vote for her. She’s the home team. She has the Democratic good ol’ boy network - Marion, Dustin, Mike, Mike and Mark, cultural conservatives all - on her side. And here I’ve gone this far and not even mentioned race.

The consistent and essential foundation of the Clintons’ long political success has been overwhelming domination of the black vote. Now Clinton cultists say with a measure of hopefulness that, by some kind of irony that the Clintons have managed to finesse, Obama has been marginalized as a black candidate.

How splendid for Hillary’s political ambition if a potentially transcendent racial figure may have been put in his place.

Hey, it’s just politics, the Clinton cultists say. All will be well again after Hillary gets her nomination.

It’s not nearly as bad, they say, as these smears being spread about Obama via e-mails.

And there’s your Clinton mantra: "Not as bad as …"

Compelling, isn’t it?

Source:  Arkansas News