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(Corrects Bob Packwood's party affiliation to Republican in 11th paragraph.)

How responsible is a wife for the betrayal of her husband?

In the case of Hillary Clinton, the answer is, a lot, according to Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus and Senator Rand Paul.

They got delicious material to use in their effort from exchanges between Clinton and her best friend Diane Blair. Blair died at 61 in 2000. Her husband donated her papers to the University of Arkansas, where they were reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website.

The charge against Hillary is that she was an enabler, not a victim, of her husband's extramarital affairs, a long string of which culminated in the White House encounters with Monica Lewinsky.

Recalling a 1998 conversation, Blair wrote: HRC insists, no matter what people say, it was gross inappropriate behavior but it was consensual (was not a power relationship) and was not sex within real meaning.

As engrossing as it is to get inside Hillary's mind, to use Bill Clinton's behavior against Hillary requires that you think she let the philandering happen, that she somehow deserved it (she's often portrayed as cold and withholding), that she did nothing to stop it, blamed the other woman, and through it all, didn't suffer.

Her first reaction about Monica was the one many of us would have: This can't be true; surely, not in the Oval Office (or the adjoining study), surely not with an employee; surely not someone young enough to be his daughter. Then came the second thought: How do I protect Chelsea, calm the rabble hounding us on the front lawn night and day, keep our enemies from using it?

What she didn't do was leave. But since when do we punish people for NOT breaking up their marriages? Aren't Republicans the family values folks? And her instinct was to believe her husband above the women with whom he strayed. Who wouldn't?

Still these remembrances from Blair show Hillary to be ready to attack women to defend her husband, guilty to all but her. She believed too long, defended too strenuously, and lined up with women's groups who wouldn't ordinarily be siding with a public official who treated women so badly.

See the rest here:

The Politics of Hillary Clinton's Marriage

Hillary Clinton, a woman who's held two of the highest offices in U.S. government, may have originally wanted to become a kindergarten teacher after her eight years as first lady.

The revelation was found in the copious notes and diary of Diane Blair, a close friend and confident to the former first lady.

In a diary entry dated June 23, 1994, Blair expresses concern that going negative on Congress would backfire on the Clinton administration and, particularly, on Hillary Clinton.

"End of BC's [Bill Clinton's] success with Congress and all be blamed on her," writes Blair.

Blair goes on to note that Hillary Clinton, while appreciative of her input, said she wasn't worried about future relations with Congress.

According to Blair, Clinton told her that when the Clintons are done with "this," the first lady will "go be a kindergarten teacher and never have to hold hands on the Hill again."

Nothing could be further from the truth, however. Clinton would go on to serve eight years in the U..S. Senate, four years as secretary of state, and is now considered the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016.

That exchange is among thousands of pages of notes, letters, and diary entries penned by Diane Blair, a political science professor and longtime Clinton friend whose papers were donated to the University of Arkansas after her death in 2000.

Blair worked on Bill Clinton's two presidential campaigns and advised the President and first lady throughout their eight years in the White House. In particular, she was very close with Hillary Clinton, who called Blair her "closest friend" in her 2003 memoir "Living History."

CNN has confirmed the documents are authentic and has reached out to a spokesman for Hillary Clinton, who has not responded.

Link:

Hillary Clinton as a kindergarten teacher?

The 90s are back, all but the shoulder pads and bad hair, and Hillary Rodham Clinton is right in the middle of it once more, as much cultural avatar as political potentate.

The decade that brought unending political scandals -- as well as the best economy that the nation has had in ages, by many markers -- started to resurface a couple of weeks ago when potential presidential candidate Rand Paul, the senator from Kentucky, took indirect aim at Clinton over her husbands relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

Then, this week, came a piece on the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website that cited papers archived at the University of Arkansas after the death of Diane Blair, a close Clinton friend.

The papers -- a collection of Blair's diary-like accounts of conversations, campaign memos and the like -- are a sometimes wrenching trip via the wayback machine, as she recounts the Clintons arduous transition from Arkansas to Washington. In the most quotable comment, Hillary Clinton is said to have called Lewinsky a narcissistic loony toon whose relationship with Bill Clinton resulted from a moral lapse on his part, albeit one driven by the pressures facing the couple in the capital.

The papers also reflect, time after time, Hillary Clintons frustration with politics and her view that, while she adopted her husbands name to stave off criticism in Arkansas, she was not about to change her personality to suit the Washington establishment, the press or, for that matter, voters.

I gave up my name, got contact lenses, but Im not going to try to be somebody that Im not, Blair quotes Clinton as saying.

That tension has been a recurring theme of the Clintons political lives. In the 1992 presidential contest, campaign aides placed much emphasis on humanizing Hillary, or at least forwarding a public version of the human being her friends, including Blair, testified to. Blairs papers included a confidential campaign memo that said voters believed Hillary Clinton was smart but just couldnt fully connect with her. (Among other things, as was reported during the campaign, many voters were unaware that the Clintons had a daughter, the then-teenage Chelsea, and thus didnt see Hillary as particularly motherly.)

She got little credit for the things people liked about the Clintons, and more of the blame for the things they disliked.

What voters find slick in Bill Clinton, they find ruthless in Hillary, the memo said.

The truth is she was a one-woman Rorschach test of the nations shifting gender roles. Was she the ardent lawyer and family breadwinner who said, I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do is fulfill my profession? Or was she the woman who saved the campaign by standing by her man when womanizing charges surfaced (and, again, when they resurfaced during the presidency)? The answer, of course, was that she was both.

Go here to read the rest:

'Ruthless' Hillary Clinton returns as the '90s make a comeback

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Washington (CNN) -- Bill and Hillary Clinton's seemingly never-ending political careers have had a tremendous impact on at least one person: Monica Lewinsky.

The former White House intern, whose sexual relationship with the 42nd President led to his impeachment, will never be able to escape the spotlight -- as long as the Clintons are still in it.

As Hillary Clinton mulls another presidential run in 2016, her husband's relationship with Lewinsky has become fodder for her political foes.

Possible Republican 2016 presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky has invoked Lewinsky and Clinton's affair twice in as many months.

"If (Democrats) want to take a position on women's rights, by all means do. But you can't do it and take it from a guy who was using his position of authority to take advantage of young women in the workplace," Paul said this past weekend on C-SPAN's "Newsmakers" program.

And on NBC's "Meet the Press" last month, Paul brought up Clinton's "predatory behavior."

Documents reveal Hillary's private reaction to Bill's cheating scandal with Monica

Asked if Bill Clinton's past should be a consideration in a potential second presidential bid by his wife, Paul said he's "not saying that," but "sometimes it's hard to separate one from the other." When it comes to judging Bill Clinton's legacy, however, Paul said the affair should certainly be considered a factor.

The conservative Washington Free Beacon first reported on public documents stored at the University of Arkansas library that detail some of Hillary Clinton's discussions with a close friend, Diane Blair, at the time. Clinton told Blair that Lewinsky was a "narcissistic loony toon."

See the article here:

Where is Monica Lewinsky?

AP

BY: Alana Goodman February 9, 2014 9:58 pm

On May 12, 1992, Stan Greenberg and Celinda Lake, top pollsters for Bill Clintons presidential campaign, issued a confidential memo. The memos subject was Research on Hillary Clinton.

Voters admired the strength of the Arkansas first couple, the pollsters wrote. However, they also fear that only someone too politically ambitious, too strong, and too ruthless could survive such controversy so well.

Their conclusion: What voters find slick in Bill Clinton, they find ruthless in Hillary.

The full memo is one of many previously unpublished documents contained in the archive of one of Hillary Clintons best friends and advisers, documents that portray the former first lady, secretary of State, and potential 2016 presidential candidate as a strong, ambitious, and ruthless Democratic operative.

The papers of Diane Blair, a political science professor Hillary Clinton described as her closest friend before Blairs death in 2000, record years of candid conversations with the Clintons on issues ranging from single-payer health care to Monica Lewinsky.

The archive includes correspondence, diaries, interviews, strategy memos, and contemporaneous accounts of conversations with the Clintons ranging from the mid-1970s to the turn of the millennium.

Diane Blairs husband, Jim Blair, a former chief counsel at Tyson Foods Inc. who was at the center of Cattlegate, a 1994 controversy involving the unusually large returns Hillary Clinton made while trading cattle futures contracts in the 1970s, donated his wifes papers to the University of Arkansas Special Collections library in Fayetteville after her death.

The full contents of the archive, which before 2010 was closed to the public, have not previously been reported on and shed new light on Clintons three decades in public life. The records paint a complex portrait of Hillary Clinton, revealing her to be a loyal friend, devoted mother, and a cutthroat strategist who relished revenge against her adversaries and complained in private that nobody in the White House was tough and mean enough.

See the original post:

The Hillary Papers | Washington Free Beacon