The GOP attack plan for Hillary Clinton

If Clinton beats the odds and wins the Democratic nomination, Republicans will say she stole it. And then they'll try to give voters a 1990s flashback.

By Mike Madden

Read more: Republican Party, Democratic Party, Hillary Rodham Clinton, John McCain, Politics, News, Economy, Iraq War, Barack Obama, 2008 election, Mike Madden

March 26, 2008 | WASHINGTON -- There was a time when simply hearing the phrase "Hillary Clinton" was enough to drive conservative Republicans more than a little mad. Think of former GOP Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana, shooting pumpkins in his backyard to prove Vince Foster was murdered by White House hit men. Or the $50 million Whitewater investigation, which dragged the country through six years of political turmoil but never produced enough evidence to file criminal charges. Or former Sen. Trent Lott, musing publicly that "maybe lightning will strike" Clinton before she could be sworn in to the Senate in 2001.

Of course, these days, with the delegate math in the Democratic presidential race tilted heavily in Barack Obama's favor, Clinton has drifted out of the GOP cross hairs. Republicans are digging deep into Obama's past now, ready to chip away at any warm feelings about him voters may still retain after a bruising primary. But a Clinton nomination, while a long shot, is still a possibility, and it wouldn't necessarily disappoint the people the woman herself dubbed, 10 years ago, the "vast right-wing conspiracy." The script for a John McCain-Hillary Clinton race is already written. The Republicans have been reading from it for more than a decade. All it would require for the 2008 contest is a little updating. Hint: They may never have to utter the word "Whitewater."

Republicans look at Obama and see someone who would be open to attacks because voters don't know him well enough. So do Clinton aides, who repeat over and over again on their daily press conference calls that Obama hasn't been vetted the way she has. But even in politics, there is such a thing as overexposure. Clinton may have precisely the opposite problem that Obama has.

"Hillary's very polarizing," one Republican consultant said. "There's no middle ground there." For 16 years, Clinton has been at the dead center of some of the country's most strident political battles, and most people seem to either love her or hate her. Stretching back a decade, her favorable ratings among voters nationwide have wobbled between the high 40s and the high 50s, while her unfavorable rating has hovered in the 40s since 2000. Republicans don't have much distance to cover to push that unfavorable figure above 50. Asked where Clinton might be vulnerable in the general election, GOP pollster Glen Bolger joked, "With voters."

Though many Democrats like and respect Clinton as a role model, an effective legislator and a fighter against a relentless GOP onslaught, the image Republicans would want in voters' minds this fall if she wins the nomination is far more sinister. They'll say Clinton will do or say anything to win, and that she can't be trusted (also, she'll raise your taxes). McCain's campaign will call her a liberal and paint her support for ending the war in Iraq as a surrender to terrorists (the same strategy they'd use against Obama). Clinton's problem is that many voters already see her in a negative light; there isn't much work Republicans would have to do to put her there.

Ironically, that might make Clinton immune to dirty tricks like the ones the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth pulled on John Kerry (or like the mud the GOP is already planning to throw about Obama's minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright). This is, after all, a candidate whose billing records as a private lawyer in Arkansas in the 1980s, the infamous lost-and-then-found Rose records, were subpoenaed, examined and even dusted for fingerprints by Republican investigators in Congress over a decade ago. When Clinton ran for reelection to her Senate seat two years ago, even the sleaziest GOP operatives basically left her alone, allowing her to cruise to victory without coming under heavy fire. But there isn't much out there voters haven't already heard about Clinton, or her husband; why bother trying to fight the battles over the White House travel office again?

In fact, even some of the GOP's longtime professional Clinton-haters say they wouldn't advise that. For one thing, those old scandals seem sort of dated. "Every time I read something where people bring something up [from the 1990s], I say, 'I'd forgotten that,'" said former Mitt Romney campaign consultant Barbara Comstock, who investigated both Clintons zealously in the 1990s while working for Dan Burton's House committee. "I did it and I forgot it." For another, Bill Clinton left the White House with his popularity intact, even after his antagonists tried -- and failed, resoundingly -- to remove him from office.

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