On Juanita Broaddrick's accusations of rape by Bill Clinton

Broaddrick's claims have been discussed here several times. Clinton supporters here attack the messengers as partisan, and categorize those who bring up the sexual assault / rape claims by Broaddrick and Paula Jones as a "vast right wing conspiracy," and point out Paula has a big nose.

In other words, they don't care if Bill is a Cosby-styled rapist or not.

I'm not interested in the election politics noise about this to be honest. This is a sustained claim that predates the election by decades (and that I don't personally think should influence the election, the accusation is against Bill not Hillary and what she is accused of is based on a single comment that can be interpreted many ways).

I attempted to give you a general history of this issue on A2K. Kathleen Willey and a couple of other women also make rape / attempted rape claims, but to me more important, they claim their lives / safety was threatened if they pressed the issue.

I'll step back now.

I thought you were talking about recent discussions in this election seasons. I saw the thread you bumped and am not surprised by the reactions. It is a extraordinary claim and that thread does not contain much substantiation for it so it is no surprise opinions largely fall along partisan lines there.

People didn't believe it about Cosby either till the preponderance of evidence came to light and this particular case doesn't have that kind of evidence behind it with that many victims.

I thought I'd add to the names you've been reading about. There are many.

http://1984arkansasmotheroftheyear.blogspot.com/2012/01/bill-clinton-bites-lips-when-he.html?m=1

There seems to be a lot of smoke for there being no fire.

I'm with you Robert. This has nothing at all to do with the election. And if Hillary get the nod, it will not give me a second's pause when I vote for her.

This is about powerful men and how some of their partisans will slut shame rape victims and never have to deal with the charges themselves.

One might point out that Bill was charged with perjury and later lost his law license during the Paula Jones trial.

Of course, it should be pointed out that a bunch of Arkansas state troopers all made headlines about how Bill was having multiple affairs while in the Arkansas governor's seat, and how they all were supposedly being instructed to cover for him.

Then it turned out that the troopers were promised a share of a book deal being put together by Cliff Jackson, an old Arkansas enemy of his, and the troopers admitted they were pressured to make stuff up to go into the book. The thing was called Troopergate until it completely fell apart.

Dismiss "right wing conspiracy" theory all you want, that's a prime example of it right there.

But that has nothing to do with this particular case. Lots of the claims against the Clintons do strike me as partisan smears but the detail and timeline of this particular case doesn't at all strike me as one of them. This woman was secretly recorded multiple times making this claim while refusing to go public over it because she thought it would only harm her while not being able to do anything to Bill, and the level of corroboration from people and verifiable facts make this a much more credible claim than the typical partisan attacks.

That doesn't mean I am ready to believe it yet but this is just not something I can write off as a right wing smear.

I'm only going by memory on this one. The scandals thrown against the Clintons over the years are so numerous and came in such rapid-fire fashion that they all melded in one seamless whole, generally delivered by angry right wing media and their adherents. The average person can only hope to debunk some of the scandals and let the source promoting them speak for themselves, or else you risk falling into Conspiracyland full time.

But that is just my point about all this, after reading the details this really doesn't sound like the **** flinging that has always surrounded the Clintons to me at all. Still doesn't make this true but it is not the same political smear and the accusation is coming from someone on the left and not the right.

Enough waffling, you either believe it or you don't at this point. Blickers will never believe anything negative said about the Clinton's no matter how much evidence there is or isn't. This isn't a razor's edge that you can stand on though. What does Broaddrick have to gain in her accusations from then?

Ahh, the memories slowly returned. This happened in the early seventies I believe, in conservative Arkansas. At the time of the meeting in the hotel room, Juanita Broaddrick was cheating on her husband with a man she would later marry. Pretty scandalous stuff for early seventies Bible Belt. That's one pretty good reason why she might not come forward. Another is that maybe Clinton didn't do anything non-consensual with her.

But those facts simply didn't make it onto the talk-radio outraged rants and conniptions at the time.

Quote McGentrix:

Perhaps, but you wouldn't believe anything good about the Clintons if you were given charts, graphs, videos and sworn testimony from 15 Medal Of Honor winners.

I disagree that one must either believe or not believe this story. The evidence is not conclusive either way (as is unfortunately the case in most rape cases).

I don't know about the coverage at the time but she was staying with a friend in the hotel room who returned afterward and has said she was found in that state, and the man she was cheating on remembers the injury and several other friends corroborate that she privately confided this to them at the time while refusing to go public with it.

Who said conspiracy? I think its more standard procedure.

Like that manly stud Henry Kissinger once testified: "There is no more effective aphrodisiac than than power"

This isn't about abuse, this is about the male perpetrators of abuse who feel obliged the privilege of invisibility for seriously flawed treatment of women they are in power over. Some guys in power think Kissinger said "power never fails, no means yes, and if she's a bit inebriated, so much the better" instead of "no more effective aphrodisiac ."

I'm sorry, the POTUS poaching trim in a dark far corridor from a twenty-two year old barely paid intern was wrong.

Should he have lost his job over it? Absolutely not. But he never should have lied about it. Right after his convention Big Dog and Hillary went on Sixty Minutes and discussed Bill's having tapped strange outside of their marriage but that he had come clean and that they worked it out and she had forgiven him, and then the American people did, too.

After all: It was business as usual. Just standard procedure. If no one can tell if he drove it home with any of the Arkansas accusers, Bill had a hand in it. He poisoned his own well by parsing 'is' and lying - looking straight into the faces of everyone on TV - "I did not have sex with that woman" about Lewinski. And the whole time that he's committing perjury and paying off some of his other accusers in other courtrooms and lawyer's offices.

Don't get me wrong. I voted HWB in '92. I voted Big Dog in '96. I'da voted for him again in 2000. If Hillary could make him VP, I'd drop Bernie in a NY minute. But he's still a dog and I half believe at least half their stories and the State Police guys, too.

Quote bobsal:

Monica said in an interview that the way the thing started was that she was talking to Clinton, and then impetuously turned around, bent forward at the waist, and threw her dress up around her hips.

That evil man, forcing himself on a 23 year old college graduate like that.

Who said he was evil? He's venial. I said I'd vote for him again for crisp's sake!

Poor guy, that woman made it absolutely impossible for him to keep his tally whacker out of her mouth. That evil, evil little tramp. She deserved what she got, right?

Quote Blickers:


Quote bobsal, sarcastically:


Age in 1996:
Monica Lewinsky................23
Bill Clinton.........................50

What did you expect the guy to do-turn it down?