I've known for a long time that the word "Clinton" scared the Republicans so badly they spent 10 years demonizing Bill and Hillary.
This is old news. But I was watching Hardball and a little O'Reilly tonight and one thing was very, very clear: it's open season on Hillary.
Matthews and the new House Majority Leader spent ten minutes regaling insults, lies, and smears at Hillary Clinton's political reputation, personal character, and even threw in a jab about her being a woman.
It was so bad that at one point Matthews asked Boehner "Is Hillary a Socialist." These bald-faced smears were so prevalent and lofty that they even started chuckling back and forth at each other.
My question is "why?" Why is she the target of the smear machine when there are two entire years between now and the next presidential election? It is possible that the right-wing has spent more time polling among their own people and Hillary has been scoring BETTER than they expected. When they begin a media blitz against anyone there is always a very good reason related to the thing the right wing uses quite well: polling of people and talking points.
If so much attention paid to an old and already-demonized enemy of the right is a way to deflect attention from the corruption, incompetence and malfeasance from the Republican party, I'd buy it. But I'm more inclined to say that if noise machine is already aimed on Clinton, there's probably a reason they're scared.