When There’s Nothing Left To Uncover About Hillary

Why 1971 Letters Don’t Qualify As Damaging News.

If the conservative site Washington Free Beacon is still paying a Republican opposition research firm $150,000 a year to dig up dirt on Hillary Clinton, editors might want to renegotiate their contract. Because if Free Beacon’s latest installation of its deep-dive into Clinton’s past is any indication, GOP investigators have already run out of leads.

The Free Beacon news flash? Back in 1971, Hillary Clinton (then Hillary Rodham) corresponded twice with Saul Alinsky, a liberal organizer and activist of renown in the 1930s, `40s and `50s. More recently, Alinsky’s been immortalized as a bogeyman by conservatives who for years have waged a fruitless campaign to portray President Barack Obama as a radical-left acolyte of Alinsky’s.

And now the brief Clinton correspondence from more than 40 years ago is being trumpeted: “The letters obtained by the Free Beacon suggest that Clinton experimented more with radical politics during her law school years than she has publicly acknowledged.” (Wait, Clinton’s a secret commie who’s also tight with Wall Street? Very confusing.)

Some conservatives on Monday strained to explain why any of this matters, and why their weird, hard-to-understand obsession with someone like Alinsky ought to be of importance in American politics today. The Free Beacon’s meaningless revelation set off lots of Twitter chuckling, but the story itself went nowhere, much to the dismay of Rush Limbaugh, and for good reason: There’s no there there.

After the story failed to make an impact outside the conservative bubble, a Free Beacon editor claimed the article was never meant as a Hillary gotcha. Instead, they were simply sharing “primary documents” with voters. I guess that’s one way to spin a swing-and-a-miss.

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