How come there isn't more hay being made about the 1996 "Chinagate" scandal?

Great Debates
1

I was just reading the wikipedia article on this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_United_States_campaign_finance_controversy.

I confess that I don’t remember this scandal. This seems like a much bigger deal than other scandals the Clintons have been associated with.

Why are the Republicans not beating the drum about this?

Thanks,
Rob

2

If they’re going to go back to 1996, Bill’s sexual activities are less snooze-inducing.

3

Because the electorate is believed to have the attention span and historical perspective of a lobotomized gnat and therefore could not grasp the significance of a twenty year old issue.

4

Answer your question?

5
  1. Is there any evidence it’s still happening?
  2. Bill is not running for President so what happened in 1996 is not really relevant unless it’s still happening
  3. Most people who remember the Clinton years remember them as good times economically, you’re not going to win over any swing voters by trying to dig up something from that long ago from an Administration that people generally had a good opinion of.
6

Are Chinese Muslims ? No ? Then there you go.
The chosen narrative is that the Clintons (not to mention Obama) want Musselmen and Mexican illegals to murder you in your sleep. Adding Chinamen to the story would just confuse people - they’re not even colour co-ordinated. Maybe for the sequel ?

7

I think a more pertinent reason is that I’m not sure people actually care if foreign money gets into U.S. campaigns. Donald Trump’s campaign openly solicited donations from foreign politicians and that story vanished within a day or two of it happening.

My wife, a Canadian, kept getting donation requests from Ted Cruz’s campaign. We don’t know why, but it was so. It’s illegal for his campaign to have done that and would have gotten even more illegal had she sent him money, but no one cares.

I don’t think the the lack of caring is from apathy so much as it is from there being little evidence foreigners are buying U.S. elections.

8

Mostly because the Republicans are focused on things China is doing today when they focus on it at all. Same goes with Clinton…they are more focused on their campaign to pin bad stuff from Benghazi, primarily, and basically put all their eggs in that basket. There is also the email scandal. So, there is a lot of things that are easier for the Republicans to point to and use than something that happened over a decade and 3 presidents ago.

[QUOTE=coremelt]

  1. Is there any evidence it’s still happening?
    [/QUOTE]

Well…probably not. This isn’t to say that it isn’t still happening, but the CCP has become a bit more adept at how they go about manipulation these days. I wouldn’t be surprised, however, if they are still doing campaign contributions through cut outs and intermediaries.

9

In addition to those things already mentioned the GOP has had it’s own questionable interactions with China. Nobody wanted to open that can of worms. But the two big factors are that it was a long time ago in terms of politics, and the really big memorable scandal occurred soon afterwards.

10

This is what I thought as well … when both parties get caught with their “hands in the cookie jar” … it would counterproductive to blame the other.