How was the GOP able to demonize Hillary Clinton to the extent they did?

[MatthewG.]

42. Part of it was her and her husbands flawed record.

Part of the problem with Hillary Clinton, who I did vote for, is that she and her husband were not in touch with the Party base on key issues. Consequently, many Democrats didn’t much like them, and people in the middle and the relatively apathetic heard anti-Clinton criticism from both sides for decades and assumed that they had to be awful people.

In terms of Hillary herself, her support for Bush Jr’s Iraq War - she was probably the most enthusiastic high profile Democratic supporter of that conflict - was a huge mistake. For many Democrats, including me (yes, I’m biased, although I was not a Sanders supporter, if that matters here) that conflict was not only obviously doomed to failure from the start, but a genuinely immoral effort. On top of that, supporting that war was perversely opposed to what polls showed was the position of (I think) over 3/4ths of the rank and file. Hillary was certainly criticized at times by Democrats before the Gulf War, but she was very rarely HATED by any Democrats - in my observation at least - until then. Once she became hated by a substantial portion of the base, with all the concomitant insults thrown her way by Democrats, it was natural for many in the middle to assume she must really be awful to be so hated by chunks of her own party.

There are other policy reasons Democrats have criticized Hillary - her hardline drug war stances as well as her late support for same sex marriage come to mind - but the Gulf War was the issue that really made her toxic to a percentage of her own party base, and I believe indirectly strengthened the force of Republican anti-Clinton propaganda.

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In terms of ethics there are some valid issues one could have with the Clintons ; Bill Clinton’s tawdry sexual history, especially combined with Juanita Broaddrick’s credible rape accusation tainted his reputation among some moderates and liberals - and fair or not some of that stuck to Hillary, and there are some legitimate concerns about the Clinton Foundation and the degree to which it gives the inpression of pay-for-play politics ; that is non-criminal but uncomfortable favoritism to wealthy donors. (Interested parties should look up the Raj Fernando story, in which a Foundation donor seems to have been given favoritism for a government job ; it’s not jaw dropping corruption but it looks bad .)

In short, it’s not hard to make a flawed person look like a monster, especially in politics where observers are already inclined towards extreme cynicism.