Damon Linker, a self-described former “conservative intellectual” (he was an editor at First Things) believes that Hillary Clinton’s policy positions are “good enough” to earn the votes of current conservatives, given that a Donald Trump administration would pose a “national threat” and that most right-wing Hillary-hatred “lack[s] any rational connection to reality.”
Take Hillary’s scandals -- please, take them. “Every single accusation is trivial. Petty. Penny-ante,” Linker asserted in a Thursday column for The Week. “Yes, even the business about Clinton's private email server. And especially the septic tank full of hyped-up, conspiracy-laden nonsense that goes by the name of ‘Benghazi.’ (If well-meaning members of the conservative movement want to explore how the Republican electorate ended up hoodwinked by a transparent charlatan-demagogue like Donald Trump, they could do worse than reflecting on their own complicity in publicizing, or at least failing to defuse, this endless, cockamamie ‘scandal.’)”
Linker admitted that Hillary and Bill “seem to be plagued by a mix of bad luck and congenitally poor judgment that we have every reason to assume would follow them back to the White House.” That said, while “in an ideal political world, all administrations would be as clean as Obama's…in the deeply troubling world we do inhabit, the prospect of a president dogged by minor scandals shouldn't distract us from the far higher stakes involved in the upcoming election.”
As for non-scandal-related matters, wrote Linker, Hillary’s résumé is “far more impressive than Barack Obama's remarkably modest list of accomplishments when he ran for president — let alone Trump's background of inheriting a few hundred million dollars and using that wealth to play a real-life game of Monopoly…If [conservatives] want to assure that Donald Trump loses, they need to assure that Hillary Clinton wins.”
