Steve Kornacki: The GOP’s New, Post-Clinton-phobic World

Steve Kornacki writes about politics for Salon. Reach him by email at SKornacki@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @SteveKornacki

It wasn’t long ago that the mere hint of an association with Bill Clinton was the kiss of death in Republican politics. Maybe you remember the run-up to the pivotal South Carolina primary in 2000, when John McCain, stung by a barrage of negative attacks from his opponent’s campaign, declared in an ad that George W. Bush “twists the truth like Clinton.” So stinging was that charge that Bush brought it up at the start of their next debate, accusing McCain of the lowest form of politics.

“You can disagree on issues,” Bush said. “We’ll debate issues. But whatever you do, don’t equate my integrity and trustworthiness to Bill Clinton.”

Contempt for all things Clinton was the animating force on the right for more than a decade, from the moment Bill was elected in 1992 until well after he left the White House, with the prospect of a Clinton restoration hovering over American politics for most of the aughts. But when Barack Obama unexpectedly beat out Hillary in 2008 and became the face of national Democratic politics, it gave the right a new all-purpose villain — and an incentive to embrace a revised, more Clinton-friendly version on the 1990s.

Nowhere is this shift more evident than in the presidential campaign of Newt Gingrich, whose own career arc neatly reflects both the right’s pre- and post-Obama consensus about Bill Clinton. When the Gingrich of today speaks of the Clinton-era, he tends to portray it as a period of productive, bipartisan cooperation between the Republican House that he led and a moderate Democratic White House....