Fedral wrote:You still haven't answered the question of why Democrats seem to get s 'free pass' when they make comments like this
I don't know about Democrats in general. But in the example of Hillary Clinton you chose, she offered a genuine apology one day later in which she called her own utterance "A lame attempt of humor". As a general observation, people will forgive you when you admit your mistakes. They will not forgive you when you offer pseudo-apologies that make things worse.
The only reason this is becoming an issue of Republicans vs. Democrats is this: the Republican party, not to put too fine a point to it, has been taken over by the political equivalent of a cult. Meanwhile, the Democrats are still ruled by the usual bunch of pragmatic, if feuding, politicians. Conventional politicians have no fundamental problem taking a step back and straighten things out. For a cult member though, apologies call the whole idea of ideological superiority into question, so they won't make any.
Thirty years ago, this wouldn't have been a partisan issue. I want Richard Nixon back!