But it is undeniable that, although Mr. Clinton has provided the kindling, what we call the right wing is assiduously fanning the flames of scandal. What I'm wondering is why conservatives are bothering to do this. I can't think of a single potential Republican presidential candidate who would shrink the size of government. That's not good enough. The Republicans are uninterested in such things.
Conservative intellectuals are even worse.
William Bennett and William Kristol, to take the best examples, are downright hostile to individual freedom and rights. Their heroes are Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, two Republicans who desecrated the Jeffersonian vision. The upshot is that the Clinton scandal reveals, for those who did not already know it, how shallow the right wing is. To appropriate Gertrude Stein's famous comment about Oakland, there is no there there. It is bankrupt, vacuous.