Although calendars show that 2014 begins this coming January 1st, everyone who is anyone knows that 2016 is the year that is really being launched which means that presidential politics is officially off and running.
So it should come as a surprise to no one that the Republicans have decided to step up opposition research on the life and career of the perceived Democratic presidential frontrunner, Hillary Rodham Clinton. Well, actually it should come as a surprise to no one who understands that the Republicans haven't got an ounce of sense in their collective pea-sized brain.
And by all existing evidence, neither does the beltway media who are breathlessly reporting that the Republicans will be digging through Mrs. Clinton's closets looking for dirt. I know that Allan Funt is no longer with us, but somebody's got to ask, "Are we on Candid Camera?"
After two years of campaigning for president with her husband, eight years of relentless probing and accusations while he served in the White House, two campaigns for the Senate and a bruising campaign for her own shot at the presidency, what possible skeletons do the Republicans think are still in her closet waiting to be discovered?
During her career in public service this very smart, very capable and apparently very threatening woman has been accused of being gay, having affairs with her husband's male staff, lining her pockets with ill-gotten gains, selling drugs, committing murder, sabotaging healthcare, refusing to leave her philandering husband, abetting attacks on US Embassy staff, and worst of all, dressing in pantsuits. Perhaps they're hoping to discover that she hunts endangered species, kicks the crutches out from under disabled veterans, burns crosses on the lawns of people of color and knocks back a fifth of whiskey after dinner each evening, but seriously, don't you think it would have already come out?
In fact I would say that the only Democratic contender that the Republicans don't need to spend time and money doing opposition research on is Hillary Clinton. That they are not only going to do it, but do it this early and that the media is going to report on it as if it's actually a newsworthy event is a very good sign for the Democrats chances in 2016. It proves that the GOP and press remain directionless, out of touch and if there is a God, irrelevant.