Stop defending former president
Democrats need to jump on the Clinton-bashing bandwagon

Hell has frozen over and Satan is offering free sled rides.

Pigs can not only fly, but do mean flips in the air.

Monkeys can fly, too, and they are flying out of my rear right now.

If I missed anything, then please insert your favorite cliché here _________.

The time has come to do something I never thought I would I do. Ask me If I would have been calling for this a month ago, or even two weeks ago, and I would have thought you were crazy.

But it is time for Democrats to take a deep breath and break a bad habit. They have to stop defending Bill Clinton.

He isn’t their responsibility anymore.

It’s going to be hard letting him go. For eight years (nine if you consider the 1992 campaign) it has become instinctive for Democrats to defend Clinton. Most of the scandals of the Clinton years turned out to be nothing (after millions of dollars wasted by Republicans to learn this), but they were suspicious none the less.

Liberals made major sacrifices for Clinton because they knew he could advance their agenda better than anyone else, even if it meant abandoning parts of it altogether. They stood by when Clinton pushed NAFTA, Welfare Reform and expanded the death penalty. They stood up for him when he couldn’t keep it zipped.

Democrats were right to defend Clinton then. He was the leader of the party and he was innocent of most of what was thrown at him. But he isn’t the leader of the Democratic Party anymore and he might not be innocent this time either.

This whole pardon mess reeks. Marc Rich cheated the government out of millions of dollars and fled the country to avoid prosecution. Rich was not a victim of a tyrannical criminal system by any means — he didn’t spend a day in prison.

Denise Rich’s contributions to Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign further complicate things. Not to mention all the gifts and the Harlem office Bill Clinton is wasting buckets of cash on.

If Bill Clinton is indeed guilty of all the accusations Republicans are throwing at him, then Democrats need to do something drastic.

They need to jump on the Clinton-bashing bandwagon.

Bill Clinton is no longer a credible leader, and he is no longer of benefit to the Democratic Party. Sure, he can still raise truck loads of cash, but it’s blood money. Democrats have whored themselves to big business to compete with Republicans for soft money. The very things Democrats once stood for are jeopardized by their pursuit of cash. Clinton, for all the good he has done, contributed to this.

Clinton’s high profile only hurts Democrats. It makes President George W. Bush look like a saint and helps the Republicans. The only thing to do is to denounce Clinton, and possibly prosecute him.

I can’t believe I just said that.

It is getting awfully sunny these days in the north pole.

Brandon Ortiz is a freshman news-editorial journalism major from Fort Worth.
He can be reached at (b.p.ortiz@student.tcu.edu).

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