RUTHFULLY YOURS

WASHINGTON — First Mitt Romney loses a presidential election that he was predicted to win in a walk. Then he appears some 15 months later on Sunday’s “Meet the Press” to lecture the nation on how Republicans might lose the presidential election once again. “I don’t think Bill Clinton is as relevant as Hillary Clinton if Hillary Clinton decides to run for president in 2016,” Mr. Romney opined.

Perhaps he forgot that Bill was elected president 21 years ago promising that a vote for him would mean acquiring two presidents “for the price of one.” Mr. Romney, Hillary is actually pretty tightly entangled with Bill, now and forever. May I suggest that you read up on their peculiar relationship? They are closer than even Bonnie and Clyde.

Actually, Mr. Romney lost an election in 2012 against a failed president. His opponent, President Obama, presided over a failed economy that is, by the way, still failing; a failed foreign policy that is still failing; and Obamacare, which is even more of a catastrophe today than it was in 2012. By the end of his pathetic first term President Obama had made President Jimmy Carter presentable and Warren Gamaliel Harding appear as a great success.

Taking his bows in the White House today should be President Mitt Romney, but he miscalculated. He relied on an Election Day online voter turnout scheme that was never tested until Election Day. Code-named ORCA, it utterly failed.  Then there was another problem: four million conservative voters stayed home.

Now we are going to have to bear Mr. Romney’s recommendations as to how to win an election. He beat a field of has-beens and never-wases to win finally the presidential nomination, and we are supposed to think he is Ronald Reagan? If one is to take Mr. Romney seriously, Hillary’s disastrous years in Little Rock and as First Lady are not relevant to 2016. Nor is what came later.

When she and Bill absconded from the White House they brought down more toxic denunciations on themselves than any politician in recent years with the possible exception of Richard Nixon. Though Mr. Nixon was for the most part denounced only by Democrats, The Clintons’ denunciations were bipartisan, though those from fellow Democrats were most damning.

I am speaking of Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, William M. Daley, Barney Frank, and — not to be forgotten — former President Jimmy Carter. Harumphed Jimmy, “disgraceful.” Solemnized the New York Observer, Mr. Clinton “was, in fact, an untrustworthy lowlife….” and, as for Hillary, the junior senator then entering the Senate: “It is clear now that we [New Yorkers] have made a terrible mistake, for Hillary Rodham Clinton is unfit for elective office. Had she any shame she would resign.”

As I say, I doubt Mr. Nixon at the height of Watergate braved similar opprobrium, certainly not from his own party.  If you doubt me, google the aforementioned names in February of 2001, immediately after the Clintons left office and as Hillary was assuming her seat in the Senate. In particular Senator Rand Paul might benefit from reading what Democrats have said of Hillary and Bill. The senator’s recent remarks about Hillary and Bill had only to do with their behavior during the Monica Lewinsky affair.

There is much more incriminating evidence on the public record ensnaring the Clintons, and next week I shall elaborate on Benghazi, where Ambassador Chris Stevens and others had sought increased security personnel for months but actually got only a steady decrease in armed guards. The Secretary of State at the time was the same Hillary who chided candidate Obama in 2008 for what he might do if an emergency struck the White House in the wee hors of the morn and he was president.

Now it is a matter of fact that when emergency struck both Hillary and Barack did nothing and Ambassador Stevens and three brave men perished. My answer to Mr. Romney’s advice offered on “Meet the Press” Sunday is that everyone running for high office has a past that is relevant to the present. Hillary’s past is, if the press does its job, inescapable.

Mr. Tyrrell is editor-in-chief of the American Spectator.