Expose and defeat the right-wing danger

People's Weekly World Commentary

This article was reprinted from the February 7, 1998 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton's charge that the sex scandal targeted against her husband is the work of a "vast right-wing conspiracy" is resonating strongly with the people. In an interview on the NBC "Today" show she accused the extremists of unleashing a flood of rumors, gossip and innuendo to reverse the results of two successive elections in which voters elected Clinton by increasing margins. Their aim, she said, is to weaken Clinton or force him from office, nullifying the democratic choice of the people.

A poll taken just after Clinton's State of the Union speech registered an approval of 73 percent, his highest rating ever. The poll results show that the "sex scandal" is quickly becoming a political scandal. The people are using the polls to send a protest; they see through the ultra- right-media vendetta and reject it. Despite our differences with Clinton's policies, the main danger in our country today is the right-wing conspiracy.

The motivation for this conspiracy is clear. This is an election year, and voter support for the GOP-corporate extremists has been on a downhill slide. They have lost the political initiative and are desperately seeking to regain it. Their majority control of Congress is imperiled next November. They know that the issue most on the minds of the people is that wages and benefits steadily decline while corporate profits skyrocket. Millions of workers have lost their jobs in corporate downsizing. The number of working people without health care protection is growing steadily. Black, Latino, and other nationally and racially oppressed have been the hardest hit by this growing income gap.

The ultra-rightists' answer to this worsening crisis is a lurid sex scandal that they hoped would divert the people's attention from the nation's real problems and sow confusion and division. The corporate news media was a willing accomplice.

There is ample evidence to support Ms. Clinton's charge. Special prosecutor Kenneth Starr has been on a "fishing expedition" seeking dirt on the Clintons for nearly four years and he came up empty-handed. Starr is a Reagan Republican with close ties to extremist Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.).

Starr is a member of the Federalist Society, an extremist outfit bankrolled by Mellon Bank heir Richard Mellon Scaife. Starr has retained his private law practice and has been paid millions of dollars in fees by corporations like Phillip Morris and Brown and Williamson with a direct interest in trashing Clinton.

Starr is aggressively pursuing Clinton using tactics of entrapment and electronic eavesdropping. He enlisted a Pentagon public affairs officer to wear a hidden microphone in hopes of entrapping Clinton. The spy brags that she "worked on the covert side of the Defense Department." The rogues gallery also includes an admitted Watergate dirty trickster who boasts that she schemed to "get McGovern" in 1972.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney warns that the extremists have their knives out against organized labor as well. "We are dealing with a ruthless assault to silence our voice," he said. He was referring to legislation by ultra-right Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R.-Miss) to outlaw union funding for pro-labor candidates while Big Business funding of candidates remains wide open. Asked about Special Prosecutor Starr and a "new McCarthy era," Sweeney replied, "I think its a very serious concern ... [Starr] is going far beyond his mandate. Where does he get his authority?"

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) has called for an investigation of Kenneth Starr's tactics. We would go one step further: fire Starr and abolish his office. It will take the active intervention of the people to break up this "vast conspiracy." Organized labor is showing the way with its grassroots mobilization of unions and community groups in support of the "Working Families Agenda" - jobs that pay livable wages, health care for all, equal rights, and the right of workers to organize. We must unite, register to vote and go to the polls Nov. 3. Vote the right-wing extremists out of office!