Ed Gillespie admits: Bill Clinton "didn't murder anyone"

New Republican talking points: It's OK to admit some conservatives went a little crazy savaging President Clinton -- in order to make the point that President Bush's critics are even crazier. We've seen it in New York Times columnist David Brooks' tsk-tsking columns and TV appearances lamenting the extremes of Clinton and Bush "hate." Now comes Republican National Committee chair Ed Gillespie, who admits "Bill Clinton did a lot of bad things, but he didn't murder anyone," in an extraordinary conversation with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. But Gillespie blames GOP "fringe" elements for spreading the ugliest stories about Clinton, while he insists mainstream Democrats are the ones saying the worst things about Bush -- and he cites Rep. Dick Gephardt calling the president "a miserable failure" as a key example. Leave it to Gillespie to equate "failure" and "murder," but the GOP spin will likely get repeated by right-wing pundits and find its way into stories by lazy mainstream reporters any minute now. Tick, tick, tick...