PITY THE Rockefellers. Try though they might, they never manage to get a Rockefeller elected president. Governors, senators and even a vice president have borne the Rockefeller name. Yet the presidency eludes them. And so they busy themselves playing kingmaker behind the scenes. Their latest project is Hillary Clinton.

Last Thursday, the public interest group Judicial Watch published a memorandum which the Clinton Library was forced to release under the Freedom of Information Act.

The 24-page memo shines a spotlight on Hillary’s little-known relationship with America’s mightiest oil and banking dynasty. Dated May 26, 1993 and addressed to “Hillary Rodham Clinton”, the memo comes from Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia — better known as Jay Rockefeller — whose great-grandfather founded Standard Oil.

The memo lays out a detailed strategy for pushing the “Clinton reform plan” for universal health coverage. In it, Rockefeller snaps orders at Mrs. Clinton in the imperious tones of a man accustomed to obedience.

He instructs Hillary to get tough on critics of the health plan. “Impeach the credibility of opponents”, he writes. Portray them as “perpetrators”, “paid lobbyists” and purveyors of “ideological extremism”. Assign investigators to conduct “opposition research” on them and expose their “lifestyles”. Do not allow them “even one day without scrutiny”.

Regarding the need for a radio and TV advertising campaign, Rockefeller fumes, “Fundraising must begin immediately. I am frankly surprised that I have not been contacted or shown a plan for fundraising and media expenditures.”

Rockefeller plainly viewed Hillary as his subordinate, and the “Clinton reform plan” as his project. And no wonder. The plan we know as Hillarycare was originally Rockefeller’s idea.

“Health care was his major interest”, writes Joshua Green in The Atlantic. “The agony of watching his mother’s lengthy battle with Alzheimer’s had made him a crusader for universal health insurance, and in the years before Bill Clinton was elected he had organized labor and health interests toward that goal.”

Many Democrats urged Jay Rockefeller to run for president in 1992, but he declined and backed the Clintons instead.

Read more at POE.com