Trump's Brilliant Unconventional Strategy: Talk About Vince Foster

Even Ken Starr has moved on from the 90s and has only good things to say about Bill Clinton now.

"An unlikely voice recently bemoaned the decline of civility in presidential politics, warned that “deep anger” was fueling an “almost radical populism” and sang the praises of former President Bill Clinton — particularly his “redemptive” years of philanthropic work since leaving the White House."

"The voice was that of Kenneth W. Starr, the former Whitewater independent counsel, whose Javert-like pursuit of Mr. Clinton in the 1990s helped bring a new intensity to partisan warfare and led to the impeachment of a president for only the second time in the nation’s history."

"The presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump, increasingly seems to be trying to relitigate the scandals that Mr. Starr investigated, dredging up allegations of sexual transgressions by Mr. Clinton to accuse Hillary Clinton — the likely Democratic nominee — of having aided and enabled her husband at the expense of Mr. Clinton’s female accusers."

"But Mr. Starr expressed regret last week that so much of Mr. Clinton’s legacy remained viewed through the lens of what Mr. Starr demurely termed “the unpleasantness.”

"His remarks seemed almost to absolve Mr. Clinton, if not to exonerate him."

“There are certain tragic dimensions which we all lament,” Mr. Starr said in a panel discussion on the presidency at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

“That having been said, the idea of this redemptive process afterwards, we have certainly seen that powerfully” in Mr. Clinton’s postpresidency, he continued, adding, “President Carter set a very high standard, which President Clinton clearly continues to follow.”

He called Mr. Clinton “the most gifted politician of the baby boomer generation.”

“His genuine empathy for human beings is absolutely clear,” Mr. Starr said. “It is powerful, it is palpable, and the folks of Arkansas really understood that about him — that he genuinely cared. The ‘I feel your pain’ is absolutely genuine.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/05/25/gop-strategist-trumps-attacks-on-clinton-over-whitewater-are-lunacy/

Maybe Starr is lightening up as he has his own problems-like a sex scandal that is costing him his job at Baylor University.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/05/25/is-kenneth-starr-historic-sleazeball-at-least-getting-his-just-deserts.html

Trump's strategy against Hillary: go after Bill, go after 90s scandals is in a sense 'unconventional' in the sense that no one has used this strategy in over 15 years.

But the reason for this is not because other campaigns lack Trump's boldness but because these attacks didn't work then. Rick Wilson, a GOP strategist tells the tale:

"GOP strategist Rick Wilson was a senior adviser to former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s campaign for the New York Senate seat in 2000 that Hillary Clinton ended up winning. Before Giuliani dropped out of the race (to be replaced by Rick Lazio), Wilson and his fellow strategists extensively tested attacks on the Clintons over Whitewater and Bill’s sexual exploits."

“We tested Whitewater and it was a nothingburger,” the Florida-based Wilson tells me. “We did polling and focus groups, testing the whole pantheon of Clinton scandals.”

"While this was done in New York, Wilson, a frequent critic of Trump, recounts that the findings are still relevant to the current national contest, because the Rudy campaign tested reactions among “soft Democrats, soft Republicans, and independents,” i.e., swing voters. These voters, Wilson says, “didn’t care,” dismissing it all as “old news” that was “asked and answered.”

"In recent days, Trump has attacked Clinton over her husband’s sexual affairs, casting her as an enabler of them and, by extension, blasting both for conspiring to abuse the women in question. But Wilson says the response to the testing of attacks over Bill’s affairs was even worse than on Whitewater."

"We tested Bill Clinton’s sex stuff, and the reaction was violently in opposition to us,” Wilson says. 

“And this was 2000, during the window when Bill Clinton was a national disgrace. The blowback from trying to use Bill against Hillary was through the roof. Women thought she deserved that Senate seat because of what Bill had done.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/05/25/gop-strategist-trumps-attacks-on-clinton-over-whitewater-are-lunacy/

This is the trouble with the idea that maybe people will vote for Trump because he represents 'change.' Yes, but change is not necessarily good. It's naive to think things can never get worse. In 1933 Hitler was change as well.

As for Hitler 2.0, his strategy may be 'unconventional' but this is for good reason.