RUTHFULLY YOURS

Representative Tom McClintock is a conservative star in Congress…..rsk

This is the 10th annual Tuolumne County Republican Party Salute to Reagan Dinner. For 36 years now, I have looked back on 1980 as the most important election of my lifetime. I’m beginning to realize that it was the second most important. The election that looms just 171 days from now is the most important election in the lifetimes of any of us in this room, and in fact, it is one of the most important elections in the life of our country.

I believe this is it for our country: there are no do-overs or “wait-for-the-next­ elections” this year. I believe we are at the precipice, and we must take back our country THIS YEAR, or risk losing it forever.

Lena Dunham, Miley Cyrus, Rosie O’Donnell and Al Sharpton all say that they’ll move to Canada if Donald Trump wins this election. But ladies and gentlemen, there are plenty of other good reasons to elect Donald Trump president! And I’d like to talk a little about them tonight.

Of course, it’s important not to over­ promise. The fact is, when Canada sees this mass influx of pretentious, pampered, obnoxious leftist celebrities flocking to the Canadian border, THEY’LL build a wall and gladly pay for it! But it’s fun to think about.

Let me put all my cards on the table. I am not a lock-step Republican. My loyalty has never been to the Republican Party or its candidates. My loyalty has always been solely to the principles of the American founding. My loyalty to the Republican Party and its candidates extends only as far as THEY are loyal to those principles. I have occasionally voted against Republican candidates who have traduced the principles of our Constitution or who have tried to turn our party away from those principles and I would do so again.

And let me also say that Donald Trump was not my first choice for our nominee. I first endorsed Scott Walker for President. When Scott Walker withdrew, I endorsed Ted Cruz. So Donald Trump wasn’t my second choice either.

But ladies and gentlemen, the voters of our party have spoken — I can sure as hell tell the difference between a fire and a fire man!

In 1960, Barry Goldwater first ran for the Republican nomination for President, only to be swamped by the overwhelming choice of Republican primary voters: Richard Nixon. Some conservatives wanted Goldwater to run anyway. That’s when he mounted the convention rostrum and spoke these words (that are just as applicable to us today as they were when he spoke them). He said:

“We’ve had our chance: we’ve fought our battle. Now let’s put our shoulders to the wheels … Let’s not stand back. This country is too important for anyone’s feelings: this country in its majesty is too great for any man, be he conservative or liberal, to stay home and not work just because he doesn’t agree (with the nomination). Let’s grow up, conservatives:’

Today, it is time for Republicans to GROW UP and defer to the opinions of the vast majority of Republican primary voters across our nation.

And if the self-appointed royal families of the Republican Party don’t approve, well tough!

This is clearly a choice between a fire and a fireman. It ought to be self-evident that we can’t keep going down the road we’ve been on these last 8 years, and Hillary Clinton offers nothing more than Barack Obama’s third term. Four more years of debt and doubt and despair. Four more years of Obamacare and Obamanomics. Four more years of the very taxes and regulations that are killing our economy.

If you have any hesitation over Donald Trump, just do the math of the Supreme Court. Barack Obama has already chosen two Supreme Court justices, and so has Bill Clinton. Those four justices have all proven themselves to be devoted leftist activists who vote in lockstep on every important issue coming before the court.

A few months before he died, I had the honor to attend a small dinner with Antonin Scalia. As he reflected on his nearly 30 years on the Supreme Court, he noted somewhat bitterly that in this last session, he had written more dissenting opinions than he had ever written in his entire career. And he said, “If you want to know where the center of the court is today, Stephen Breyer has written the fewest dissenting opinions this session:’ And that was with Antonin Scalia still on the court.

There is not going to be any criminal prosecution of Hillary Clinton.

Get used to the idea. It’s not going to happen. Yes, hopes are yet again stirring that there might at long last be a reckoning for this living, breathing monument to mendacity and Washington-insider corruption.

Don’t get swept away. It’s bad for your blood pressure … and it’s futile.

The latest revelations about Clinton Foundation pay-to-play shenanigans are the most outrageous thing since, well, the prior revelations about Clinton Foundation pay-to-play shenanigans. Judicial Watch, which tries to do the oversight the Republican Congress won’t do, has uncovered 44 more Clinton “private” emails related to State Department business that Mrs. Clinton failed to preserve and tried to destroy in violation of federal law. They illustrate — which is to say, they re-illustrate the long established reality of — the incestuous relationship between the State Department under Mrs. Clinton’s stewardship and the “charitable” foundation set up by Bill and Hillary Clinton to monetize their political influence.

In a nutshell, then-Secretary of State Clinton, through her two closest aides, Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin, used her influence to benefit top Clinton Foundation donors with access to political movers and shakers, international economic opportunities, and possibly government employment. The foundation donors gave copiously, enabling Bill and Hillary Clinton to earn tens of millions of dollars in speaking fees, live off the fat of “charitable donations” (comparatively little of which actually went to humanitarian relief), and turn the foundation and its offshoots (like Teneo Consulting) into an administration-in-waiting with high-paying jobs for Clinton cronies. Some, like Ms. Abedin, managed to draw foundation salaries even as they drew State Department paychecks underwritten by taxpayers.

And of course, because these are the Clintons we’re talking about, there is an even seamier underside to the barely camouflaged corruption. One of the Clinton donors for whom the Clinton State Department was pulling strings was Gilbert Chagouri. He’s a shady Lebanese-Nigerian whose family businesses thrived under Nigeria’s military dictatorship and who later had to pay a $66 million settlement to avoid prosecution on the millions he allegedly stole from the country. Naturally, he has donated somewhere between $1 million and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation, in addition to pledging $1 billion — that’s billion with a ‘b’ — to the Clinton Global Initiative.

As you would expect, he’s also behind one of the innumerable Clinton speech-making paydays — in this instance, as the Wall Street Journal’s editors note, it was $100,000 for Bill to spread his pearls of wisdom in the Caribbean.

Does all this stink to high heaven? Well, yes … but “stinks to high heaven” would not necessarily amount to a criminal case, even if you had a Justice Department that was open to the idea of prosecuting Mrs. Clinton.

As it happens, the incumbent attorney general — who was first appointed to a prestigious U.S. attorney position by Bill Clinton, and who just happens to be in line to keep her job if Hillary Clinton is elected president — would not approve an indictment of Hillary if the latter robbed a bank at high noon on national television.

Look at it this way: Mishandling classified information in a grossly negligent manner is a crime very straightforward to prove, and the evidence against Mrs. Clinton was overwhelming. The only felony that may have been more of a slam-dunk in Mrs. Clinton’s case involves her destruction of thousands of government records. Yet, the Justice Department and the FBI chose not to indict her.

By comparison, political corruption is very difficult to prove, especially if it is of the inchoate variety exemplified by the Clinton scheme — the peddling of access and influence under an intricate web of charitable giving, political consultancy, and speaking engagements.

Moreover, these hard-to-make criminal cases have been made all the harder by the Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling just a few weeks ago in McDonnell v. United States. There, a mountain of evidence demonstrated that a donor provided $175,000 in gifts and personal loans to the former governor of Virginia (and his wife) in exchange for political influence. Yet, the justices held that the governor’s opening of doors to key decisionmakers and less-than-subtle pressuring on behalf of the donor was insufficient to establish a prosecutable case of bribery and corruption. (The case involved an unsuccessful effort to convince Virginia’s public universities to perform research studies the donor needed in order to market a nutritional supplement.)

There are reasons good, bad, and obvious for the difficulties these corruption cases pose for prosecutors. To start with the obvious, the statutes are written by the politicians against whom they will be applied, so there is a certain built-in looseness in the joints. While some of that is cynical, there is also some justification in constitutional and policy considerations.

In representative government, elected officials are supposed to be influenced by the concerns of constituents, and voters must be free to provide financial and other support to the candidates who will fight for their concerns if elected. It is challenging to write laws targeting corrupt pay-to-play arrangements without sweeping in legitimate campaign support and representative government. If the laws we have are too expansively construed, we come dangerously close to what the framers sought to avoid: an executive branch check against legislative efforts that reflect legitimate concerns of citizens.

Of course, if the laws are too narrowly construed, you end up with what we see in the McDonnell case: a free pass given to palpable (albeit ultimately unsuccessful) bribery — which signals to elected officials that they can shake down constituents and push the agendas of well-paying insiders with impunity.

That is everything that everyone claims to hate about Washington. But here’s the thing: We keep sending the same people there over and over again — now, even appearing poised to elect to the nation’s highest office Mrs. Clinton, whose only known accomplishment is the raising of pay-to-play, wheeler-dealer government to an art form.

The Supreme Court, in the McDonnell case as in the Obamacare cases, seems to be conveying a blunt political message clothed in legal parlance: “If you, the American people, do not want corrupt public officials and ruinous public policy, stop voting for them. Don’t expect us judges to do your heavy lifting for you.”

Concededly, this message would be a lot easier to take if the courts were promoting liberty across the board rather than imposing elements of the “progressive” political program. Nevertheless, it is worth the look at the mirror. If someone as squalid as Hillary Clinton is a viable political candidate, that is not a failure of our legal system. It is a failure of our culture.

In the past few weeks, the media has desperately struggled to construct Trump outrages out of thin air. The media hit a new low with its phony outrage over Trump calling Obama and Hillary the founders of ISIS. There was no similar outrage when Hillary Clinton called Trump an ISIS recruiter.

But then there are moments like this when the media makes it really obvious that it’s not just biased, it’s just trolling for one political campaign.

“Trump backs off his backpedal on Obama terror claim,” is the Politico headline. “Hours after stating his claim of Obama as the founder of ISIL was “sarcasm,” Trump says maybe it wasn’t” is the subheader.

A. This reads like it was written by an obnoxious robot incapable of understanding colloquial human language

B. Politico and the rest of the press are very obviously manufacturing fake scandals and reaching new lows to do it.

Trump had eased off the claim Friday morning, blasting the media for seriously reporting what he suggested was a sarcastic comment. “Ratings challenged @CNN reports so seriously that I call President Obama (and Clinton) ‘the founder’ of ISIS, & MVP,” Trump tweeted. “THEY DON’T GET SARCASM?”

But during an afternoon rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, Trump said his initial remark wasn’t “that sarcastic, to be honest with you.”

Hillary Clinton has never won an honest election. And she isn’t about to start trying to win one now.

Her favorite kind of race is rigged. Deeply unpopular and deemed untrustworthy by huge numbers of voters, she plans to win by panicking Republicans into abandoning Trump to “save” themselves.

Hillary is an insider and her weapon of choice is the media. The weapon has a limited impact on the average Republican voter, but has a great deal of impact on the establishment Republicans who are her targets. Their weaknesses are position and respectability. From the very beginning some establishment Republicans preferred to see Hillary win to maintain the status quo.

For some that meant the policy status quo in which illegal alien amnesty, mass immigration, support for the Muslim Brotherhood and nation-building remained the deranged staples of GOP policy. For others it was about maintaining their privileged positions and access to power regardless of how badly they lost.

But a much larger wing of the party was uncertain about whether Trump could or should win. It was this demographic which Hillary’s people have been hammering with widespread coverage of defections by establishment types. The campaign’s goal has been to convince them that Trump is doomed and that his victory might even be more dangerous than a win for Hillary.

Hillary’s strategy is to split the Republican Party. Cut off the head from the body. Convince the establishment to starve Trump of resources while rallying Republican candidates to disavow him. Pit elements of the GOP against each other while Hillary cakewalks to victory and then inherits a conflicted and broken Republican Party incapable of presenting a coherent opposition to her agenda.

It’s a good plan. And only Republicans can let it happen.

Hillary Clinton did not want to face an actual opponent in the Democratic primaries. She does not want to face Donald Trump or anybody else with a national profile and name recognition in an election.

That’s what worked for her in New York. It’s the strategy she’s hoping will work for her one more time.

Short of diving head-first from atop his eponymous tower, Donald J. Trump seems unable to satisfy the Never Trump crowd.

Perhaps the most aggravating thing about Trump’s mortal enemies on the right — many of whom I have known and admired for decades — is that they refuse to take “yes” for an answer.

Mitt Romney, Senator Ted Cruz, columnist George Will, and others complain that Trump is a non-conservative, crypto-Democrat — Hillary Clinton with orange hair.

No doubt, Trump’s trade policies violate conservative doctrine on the free exchange of goods and services across borders. Still, it was good to hear Trump say on Monday, “Trade has big benefits, and I am in favor of trade. But I want great trade deals for our country that create more jobs and higher wages for American workers. Isolation is not an option, only great and well-crafted trade deals are.”

Also, Trump’s frequent inability to mute his internal monologue maddens even his most avid supporters.

However, on policy issues and political judgments, Trump has done the Right thing — only to hear catcalls from the very conservatives who should welcome his major strides in their direction.

Start with Trump’s most important choice: his pick for vice president.

As the person who would serve a breath from the presidency, Trump could have tapped a blowhard governor who barely has improved the Garden State. Thankfully, Chris Christie remains trapped in Trenton. Trump could have recruited Senator Bob Corker (R., Tenn.), a milquetoast moderate whose convoluted legislative strategy against President Obama’s dreadful nuclear deal with Iran made it virtually unstoppable.

Instead, Trump selected Governor Mike Pence. The Indiana Republican was the Right’s True North in Congress. He earned a 99 percent lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union. This darling of the pro-market Club for Growth repeatedly cut taxes as governor and resuscitated the Hoosier State’s economy. This socially conservative economic libertarian unites the GOP’s twin wings.

Recognizing that the Supreme Court has devolved into America’s election-free über-legislature, Trump unveiled eleven prospective justices. The conservative Heritage Foundation recommended several of these stalwart constitutionalists. They all are affiliated with the Federalist Society, the Vatican of rightist jurisprudence. Confirming his originalist intent, Trump said Tuesday on Hannity that he wants nominees “as close to Justice Scalia as we can get.”

Trump’s foes moaned that he had raised too few donations to battle the magnificently funded Duchess of Chappaqua. And then, in July, Trump collected a competitive $80 million, averaging $69 per contribution, versus Clinton’s $90 million, averaging $44.

Trump on Monday calmly delivered a serious, focused speech to the Detroit Economic Club. With the very significant exception of its trade-policy language, Trump’s address could have been written by Bill Kristol, Charles Murray, or any other conservative thinker now sticking red-hot needles into his Donald Trump voodoo doll. Declaring “We will Make America Grow Again,” Trump passionately tied Clinton’s left-wing faith to Detroit’s (and America’s) economic disease and then prescribed nearly every major conservative economic reform.

Yes, Donald Trump has muddied the issue of possible voter fraud in the November election with his comment that the only way Hillary Clinton can win Pennsylvania is by way of stolen votes. There doesn’t seem to be an issue that Trump can’t handle without hyperbole and exaggeration.

But the media pile-on that Trump has experienced over his call for election observers to monitor the polls in Pennsylvania is unfair. The Los Angeles Times claimed that his remarks calling for poll monitors in Pennsylvania had “strong racial overtones,” even though he never mentioned race. “The comments raised the specter of confrontations on Election Day in precincts with many minority voters,” the Times reported. Other commentators rebutted Trump by repeating spurious claims that voter fraud is extremely rare.

Savvy Pennsylvania politicos have begged to differ. Chris Matthews, the liberal MSNBC host who comes from Pennsylvania, vehemently opposes requiring ID at polling places. But he agrees that voter fraud is a Philadelphia tradition. In 2011, on his show Hardball, he explained a common scheme:

People call up, see if you voted or you’re not going to vote. Then all of a sudden somebody does come and vote for you. This is an old strategy in big-city politics. . . . I know all about it in North Philly — it’s what went on, and I believe it still goes on.

Philadelphia has a long reputation of fixing elections as a means of controlling patronage and municipal contracts. Voter intimidation also has occurred. In the 1960s, cops would routinely hassle black voters trying to vote. But intimidation can take many forms. In 2012, two members of the radical New Black Panther Party used nightsticks and racial epithets in an effort to scare white voters away from a Philadelphia polling place. The Obama administration ended up dropping almost all of the charges in the case against the Panthers.

The election is still weeks away but you wouldn’t know it from the various and sundry MSM toadies out-mugging each other on TV crowing that Hillary Clinton has already been elected queen of the universe. After all, the polls prove it. Science, baby, science!

Clumsy moves on the chessboard? Wishful thinking pushed to delusional levels? Smoke-and-mirrors? All of the above?

Suppose for the sake of argument that Hillary Clinton loses the election. Where does she go from there? Frankly, nowhere. She will not run for office again for the simple reason that the party will only be too happy to forget all about the Clintons and would refuse to support Hillary for any elected office, not even town clerk in Yonkers.

No matter what MSM clowns tell you, Clinton is a lipstick-on-a-pig candidate. Any other Democrat (never mind Republican) with such a pathetic resume would never even be considered as the party’s standard bearer. Any other Democrat would have been slapped silly by FBI Director Comey and offed to jail in an orange pants suit.

So, were she to lose the election, Hillary Clinton would have to “settle” for hard cash. The tons of it flowing into the slush fund known as the Clinton Foundation would then be used to support a life style of the rich and famous for the would-be-queen of the universe and her elderly consort nearing decrepitude.

On second thought, maybe not. Who, after all, would be foolish enough to continue kicking in big bucks so Queen Hillary can gallivant around the world, Bubba in tow to sample more nubile “assistants”? The pay-for-play option, including Bill’s hefty speaking fees, would vanish five minutes after Trump is declared president.

Throughout this campaign season, Democrats have feigned confusion about why disaffected Republicans have not embraced Hillary Clinton, given Donald Trump’s character defects. But the K-12 education plank in the Democratic Party platform does a lot to explain the hesitance. The party’s promises seem designed to satisfy teachers unions rather than to appeal to ordinary Democrats, much less opposition moderates.

Democrats say that they will “recognize and honor all the professionals who work in public schools,” including “teachers, education support professionals, and specialized staff,” suggesting that every teacher does a terrific job. The party also promises that it will “end the test-and-punish version of accountability.” Only charter schools seem to need more scrutiny: The platform includes a full paragraph of ideas to regulate them.

Democrats nationwide seem to have a different view. Like Republicans, Democrats have a positive view of most teachers, but their confidence does not extend to all of them. Democrats and Republicans both think that nearly 60% of teachers in their local schools are either excellent or good, and another quarter at least satisfactory. But Democrats find up to 15% of teachers unsatisfactory. It doesn’t seem like rank-and-file Democrats are ready to honor all teachers and simply trust them.

These are some of the data Education Next reveals in a survey to be published next week. Over the course of May and June our publication surveyed 700 teachers and 3,500 other Americans. The results demonstrate how out of touch the Democratic Party has become on education.

In contrast with platform-committee Democrats, 80% of rank-and-file adherents who took a position on the issue said they backed the federal requirement that “all students be tested in math and reading each year,” with only 20% disagreeing. Republicans had similar responses: 74% and 26%, respectively.

As for punishing and rewarding teachers, 57% of Democrats nationwide said they supported “basing part of the salaries of teachers on how much their students learn.” Fifty-nine percent said teacher tenure should be eliminated.

For their platform, party insiders voted to “support enabling parents to opt their children out of standardized tests.” But Democrats nationwide do not share this view. When asked whether they favored “letting parents decide whether to have their children take state math and reading tests,” 71% of Democrats said they did not. So did 69% of Republicans.

Democrats in Philadelphia also suggested that they “will end the school-to-prison pipeline by opposing discipline policies which disproportionately affect African-Americans and Latinos.” But 61% of Democrats around the country oppose federal policies that “prevent schools from expelling and suspending black and Hispanic students at higher rates than other students.” So do 86% of Republicans, and a majority of both African-American and Hispanic respondents who take a side.

Democratic honchos qualify their support for charter schools by asserting that they “should not replace or destabilize traditional public schools”—not a good sign since it is impossible for charters to enroll more students without contraction elsewhere. But when Democrats nationwide were asked whether they supported “the formation of charter schools,” 58% of those with a position said yes, as did 74% of Republicans. CONTINUE AT SITE

This column appeared before the conventions but cogently explains the fault lines of polling….rsk

Gabriel Sanchez is Professor of Political Science and Executive Director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center for Health Policy at the University of New Mexico. He is also a Principal at the research and polling firm Latino Decisions.

Alan Abramowitz is the Alben W. Barkley Professor of Political Science at Emory University

In 2012, national polls in October suggested the presidential race was a virtual tie. The Real Clear Politics polling average gave Barack Obama a slight 0.7 point lead over Mitt Romney, but he actually won by almost 4 points. Of the final 11 national polls released in 2012, as reported on Real Clear Politics, 7 were a tie or had Romney ahead, while only 4 had Obama ahead.

Why were so many of the polls wrong? In part, because they failed to capture how minorities would vote. Unfortunately, some pollsters may be making the same mistakes in 2016 — and thereby underestimating Hillary Clinton’s lead in the polls.

In 2012, many polls underestimated how many minorities would vote and how many would vote for Obama. For example, a Politico poll released the morning of Election Day said the race was tied at 47 percent each for Obama and Romney. The poll said that 62 percent of Latinos supported Obama, while the exit polls reported 71 percent, and Latino Decisions reported 75 percent. Among the “another race” category, which is mostly comprised of Asian Americans, Politico reported that 47 percent supported Obama, while the exit polls reported 73 percent, and an Asian American Decisions exit poll reported 72 percent.

And Politico was not alone. A Monmouth/Survey USA poll, which had Romney leading by 3 points, suggested that Obama would barely win Latinos, 48 percent to 42 percent.

This problem was known before election day. In the fall of 2012, Mark Blumenthal asked “Is The Gallup Poll Favoring Mitt Romney By Undersampling Minority Voters?” which came after a series of blog posts by Alan Abramowitz, one of which asked “Is Gallup Heading for Another Big Miss?” As Nate Cohn has recently pointed out, it is difficult to know the “correct” percent of voters that are white vs. non-white. Nevertheless, many 2012 polls underestimated Obama’s share of the vote by under-representing minorities’ share of the electorate and underestimating their support for Obama.

Now, in 2016, it looks like many pollsters didn’t learn much from 2012.

Several polls suffer from flaws in how they sample Latinos. While large bilingual polls of Latino voters from outlets such as Latino Decisions and Univision/Washington Post have reported very little support for Donald Trump, other national polls that interview Latinos only in English show that 29 percent to 37 percent of Latinos will support Trump — better even than Romney fared. These polls also show Trump doing as well or better among Asian-Americans, compared to Romney. Some polls even estimate that 20 percent to 25 percent of blacks support Trump.

Here is one example from a Survey USA poll conducted on behalf of The Guardian, which gave Clinton a 3-point lead over Trump (39 percent vs. 36 percent). The sample of the poll was 74 percent white. However, a comprehensive analysis of census data and growth rates by Ruy Teixeira and William Frey estimates that less than 70 percentgof voters in the 2016 cycle will be white. If we adjust the racial composition of this poll to reflect the Teixeira and Frey’s estimates, Clinton’s margin grows to almost 5 points (see here).

The Survey USA poll is also arguably underestimating support for Hillary Clinton among three different groups of minority voters:
•Asian-Americans. In this poll, Clinton leads 48-29 among Asian-Americans. However, a recent national survey of Asian American registered voters conducted in six different languages found that just 10 percent planned to vote for Donald Trump.

I can’t decide what’s more infuriating: Those e-mails suggesting inappropriate links between Hillary Clinton’s State Department and the Clinton Foundation, or her campaign’s explanation of those e-mails suggesting that they think I’m a total, complete moron.

At the same time that Cheryl Mills was working as chief of staff in the secretary of state’s office, she was also conducting interviews for the secretary of state’s foundation. That is a textbook example of a situation that, at the very least, looks like someone using her public resources for personal gain. Any reasonable person can recognize that.

But the Clinton campaign — apparently hoping that voters completely lack critical-thinking skills – has released a statement in response insisting that all suspicions are completely ridiculous, that Mills was just doing “volunteer work for a charitable foundation,” and that “the idea that this poses a conflict of interest is absurd.”

That’s right . . . Mills was just doing it for fun! She was just like, “Hey I’ve got some time off . . . you know what my favorite thing to do in the whole world is? Watch TV? Drink wine? Nahhhhh, I want to go interview potential candidates for the Clinton Foundation! And she definitely chose that specific foundation solely because it was so great and fun, and definitely not because it was one that was run by her boss. How “absurd” to think that someone spending her free time doing work for her boss’ foundation might possibly indicate she was receiving anything from her boss for doing so. In fact, I’m sure they never even talked about it! And if you think otherwise, then you are the one who is being “absurd!”

Does anyone else hear how ridiculous that sounds?

When Hillary Clinton took office as secretary of state, she and her foundation agreed to conduct their affairs in a way that would not “create conflicts or the appearance of conflicts for Senator Clinton as Secretary of State.” Got that? Not even the appearance of conflict — and regardless of what you think about what actually happened, you still can’t deny that this is a situation where that “appearance” is definitely, glaringly, blatantly present.

Of course, Hillary Clinton knows all of this, and she knew it at the time. She’s a career politician. Not only was she well aware of how it would look, but she also knew enough about political media to have predicted that people would find out about it when she ran for president. But guess what? She did it anyway, which suggests that she believes that she doesn’t have to worry about what she does or how it will look. She just does what she thinks is best for herself, no matter how glaringly inappropriate, because she is confident that no matter what, she will never, ever have to suffer any real consequences for her behavior.

What’s even worse is that this attitude is par for the course for the Clintons. Whether it’s this kind of shady business with her slush fund foundation, or her husband Bill having a private chat with Loretta Lynch as the Department of Justice was deciding whether or not to indict her, it’s clear that the Clintons are so confident in their total power that they are certain they will never, ever have to answer for anything.

Investigations and indictments aside, we already know that the way Hillary Clinton conducted herself as secretary of state was dishonest, inadequate, and fueled by her own self-interest. Scandal surrounds this woman, and for her campaign to claim that it’s “absurd” — not even understandable but incorrect, but actually “absurd” — to be suspicious about the objectively suspicious behavior of a woman with an objectively suspicious track record is, objectively, insulting.

— Katherine Timpf is a reporter for National Review Online.