The flippant response of Hillary Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic Party presidential nomination, to a woman questioner in New Hampshire, provides a concise picture of the hypocrisy of Clinton in particular, and the feminist movement in general.
In a tweet in November, Clinton continued to draw attention to what she evidently believes is a major, if not the principal, reason she should be elected president of the United States: She is a woman. Repeating the mantra of the feminist movement at least since the sexual misconduct allegations in 1991 by Anita Hill against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, Clinton tweeted, “To every survivor of sexual assault … you have the right to be heard. You have the right to be believed. We’re with you.”
At a campaign event in New Hampshire (which holds the first-in-the-nation presidential primary), a woman in the audience asked a question clearly intended to focus on the hypocrisy of Clinton. “You recently came out to say that all rape victims should be believed. But what would you say about Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey, and Paula Jones? Should we believe them as well?”
Juanita Broaddrick said she was raped by Bill Clinton, Kathleen Willey said she was sexually assaulted by him, and Paula Jones brought a sexual harassment lawsuit against him while he was president.
Surely Hillary should have anticipated this question, so presumably her response was constructed beforehand: “Well, I would say that everybody should be believed at first, until they are disbelieved based on evidence.” With that, she dropped the microphone into her lap and grinned broadly to the applause of her supporters in the room.
Perhaps the most unsettling of the stories of the three women mentioned above is the one told by Juanita Broaddrick, a county coordinator in Bill Clinton’s first run for governor of Arkansas in 1978. According to Broaddrick, Clinton — then attorney general of Arkansas — raped her twice in one encounter, biting her lip so hard “he almost severed it.”
As Clinton left the room after raping her, he noted her swollen lip and callously quipped, “You better get some ice on that.”
Two observations can be made of Hillary Clinton’s response in New Hampshire. First, her assertion that any woman accuser has a “right to be believed” when charging a man with any form of sexual assault may be feminist dogma, but it is antithetical to what every American — male or female — deserves. All people have the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
Yet across the nation, colleges are indoctrinating students with the feminist idea that a woman should be believed in such cases — that she has a “right” to be believed. These colleges are no doubt responding, at least in part, to pressure from the federal government, because of Title IX requirements, when they expel male students who have been accused — but not convicted — of sexual assault. One only has to remember the false accusations of rape against three Duke University lacrosse players in 2006, to provide an example of why this standard is unjust.
In 1991, appellate court judge Clarence Thomas was nominated for a vacant post on the U.S. Supreme Court. At the end of the hearings, it was apparent that he would be confirmed. But then Anita Hill, a law professor at the University of Oklahoma, suddenly brought forth accusations that Thomas had sexually harassed her years earlier when he was her boss at the Department of Education and later at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Despite a lack of evidence against Thomas beyond Hill’s accusations, feminists said that the simple fact that Hill had accused Thomas should be enough to sink his elevation to the Supreme Court. Unfortunately for Hill, several women who had worked for Thomas came forward to defend his character, while none offered any evidence that supported Hill’s charges.
Thomas was confirmed, and his conservative supporters relaxed, believing the battle over his reputation to be concluded. But since that time, the American Left has mobilized to alter what Americans believe about the Thomas-Hill episode. At the close of the original hearing, about two-third of Americans polled believed that Thomas, not Hill, was telling the truth. However, by the end of 1992, the Washington Post reported that the public now believed Hill, 53-37 percent.
While the Left rallied to Hill’s cause, arguing that a woman should always be believed in any charge of sexual harassment or outright assault, regardless of the evidence, they radically changed their stance with the Clinton scandals of 1998, only seven years later. Betty Friedan, of the National Organization for Women (NOW), who had dismissed President Bush as Public Enemy No. 1 for his support of Thomas over Hill, defended President Clinton over two women who charged him with sexual harassment — Paula Jones, and Kathleen Willey — and Juanita Broaddrick, who said Clinton had raped her. In a classic example of double-standard hypocrisy, NOW fought against Thomas in 1991, but then strongly defended Clinton seven years later.
The 26 senators who voted against the confirmation of Thomas — and were still in office in 1998 — voted to keep Clinton in office. Every single one.
And even Anita Hill herself defended Clinton. In a Newsweek interview, she claimed that the cases of Clarence Thomas and Bill Clinton were “quite different.” In an appearance on Meet the Press, Hill supported the defense of Clinton by feminist leaders — the same ones who had attacked Thomas seven years earlier. “We live in a political world,” she explained, “and the reality is that there are larger issues other than just individual behavior.”
And who can forget Hillary Clinton herself dismissing all the accusations against her husband as simply a “vast right-wing conspiracy?”
The second part of Clinton’s response to the questioner in New Hampshire should also be challenged: “Well, I would say that everybody should be believed at first, until they are disbelieved based on evidence.” Certainly the burden of proof is on the accuser, not the accused; however, this statement implies that the three women — Jones, Willey, and Broaddrick — have been demonstrated by the evidence to be lying. No such evidence has been produced by the Clintons or anyone else. It must be inferred that Hillary Clinton is calling all three women liars.
On the contrary, the stories of these three women are presented as quite credible in Roger Stone and Robert Morrow’s new book, The Clintons’ War on Women.
Voters should certainly examine all presidential candidates’ stands on the important issues of the day, as well as their general political philosophy. Citizens who hold to the concepts of limited government, individual liberty, free enterprise, and fidelity to the Constitution of the United States can clearly see that Hillary Clinton does not fit the bill.
Another factor a conscientious voter should examine in a candidate is his or her personal character. The rank hypocrisy and utter disregard for the abuse her own husband dished out to several women, with her own additional disrespect for the rights of those women, should rule out Hillary Clinton as well.
Steve Byas is a professor of history at Hillsdale Free Will Baptist College in Moore, Oklahoma. His book, History’s Greatest Libels, includes a chapter defending Clarence Thomas from the accusations made against him by Anita Thomas.
