Brent Budowsky: Hillary whips McCarthy

Vice President Biden should think twice before launching a vulture candidacy for president based on his hope that partisan Republicans in Congress destroy the prospects of Hillary Clinton becoming the first female president.

Clinton, who has begun to hit her stride as a campaigner, may soon become the second member of her family to be called the comeback kid.

{mosads}After the joyous visit of Pope Francis to America, GOP leaders have begun a season of confessions.

First Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) confessed that he believes prominent players on the GOP right are “false prophets.” Then he stunned the capital by abruptly resigning from Congress.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who wants to succeed Boehner, in the mother of all gaffes that spoke the mother of all truths, then confessed that the House Benghazi Committee is a partisan campaign operation designed to politically attack Clinton.

After that humiliating comment that destroyed the credibility of the committee, Clinton must have thought: “There is a God, and She likes me.” Advocates of Biden for president, who infuriate many women who support Clinton, offer no vision or rationale for a Biden candidacy beyond hoping Nixonian Republicans destroy her.

The McCarthy gaffe gives the front-runner in the race for the Democratic nomination decisive weaponry to fight back and win. Biden is mired in a no-man’s land of opportunism, lacking the conviction to join her battle against partisan defamations by Republicans or a reason to run against her except the calculation of his ambition.

There is a dance in the step of Hillary Clinton. She has shined in recent media appearances, where she has been forceful, charming, sometimes funny and strongly presidential.

The Clinton whipping of McCarthy and his false prophets of GOP partisanship began with a television ad that is devastating because it is true. The former secretary of State is right, credible and authentic when she condemns abuses of Republicans who shamefully continue their four-year campaign to exploit the death of Americans in Benghazi for craven partisan purposes.

When Democrats gather for their presidential debate next Tuesday, a high point will be the whipping that Clinton will administer to the new GOP McCarthyites, led by Kevin McCarthy, for abuses reminiscent of the shady practices of an earlier generation of -McCarthyites, led by earlier GOP false prophet Joe McCarthy.

When Clinton whips McCarthy, she will be attacking the abuses of a Republican Congress that, according to RealClearPolitics, is viewed unfavorably by a whopping 76 percent of voters — a powerful change argument for electing a Democratic-led Congress.

When the Benghazi inquisition convenes on Oct. 22 to interrogate Clinton during the eighth attempt by a GOP congressional committee to persecute her, Republicans would be well advised to be on their best behavior. This may disappoint the draft Biden schemers, but Americans will not reward another televised dose of Republican McCarthyism.

As Hillary Clinton hits her stride and takes the offensive, Bill Clinton — the most highly successful and widely admired living former president — has reentered the public fray in full force at a key inflection point that works to her great advantage.

Let’s set aside the recent ghoulish column by Maureen Dowd of The New York Times that she began by continuing her decades-long vocation of insulting the Clintons and ended by exploiting the tragic death of the universally beloved Beau Biden, suggesting he agreed with her petty venom directed against the Clintons.

On high policy in presidential politics, Biden is like the Nowhere Man in the Beatles song. First he gives a populist speech on Labor Day. Then he organizes a meeting using Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) as a prop for campaign image-making. Then he tells the Concordia Institute he is no Bernie Sanders, no populist and presumably no Warren because he is, he claims, a realist.

If Biden hopes the new McCarthyites destroy Clinton, and Clinton whips McCarthy to defeat them, Democrats will stand with her— not with him.

Budowsky was an aide to former Sens. Lloyd Bentsen and Bill Alexander, then chief deputy majority whip of the House. He holds an LL.M. degree in international financial law from the London School of Economics. He can be read on The Hill’s Contributors blog and reached at brentbbi@webtv.net.