Perhaps because it's becoming harder and harder to defend Hillary Clinton on the merits, MSNBC.com has turned to the tried and true "hypocrisy" card to try to undercut Republican complaints about the former secretary of state's lack of transparency.
"It's the transparency, stupid," reads the teaser headline on the main page. The corresponding image is a sinister-looking black-and-white photo of former Texas Governor Rick Perry (R). "It’s not just Hillary Clinton. Several potential 2016 Republican presidential candidates are facing email and transparency issues of their own," noted the caption.
"While Hillary Clinton endures the continued fallout from the news that she used only a private e-mail system to conduct official business while she was secretary of state, several potential 2016 Republican presidential candidates are facing email and transparency issues of their own," msnbc.com writer Aliyah Frumin began her March 11 story.
Frumin rattled off how Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, and Rick Perry all supposedly are hypocrites for having used private emails either as governor or, in Walker's case, as a county executive. Of course, none of these men were held to strict federal standards to which federal executive officeholders like Mrs. Clinton were.
Additionally, all of these men were accountable directly to voters while Mrs. Clinton was not, serving as a Cabinet officer reporting to the president and answerable to congressional inquiry. Federal records laws exist both for preserving records for the sake of historical record and for congressional inquiry and oversight. It is we the taxpayers who are served by federal records laws which require official correspondence of Cabinet secretaries be preserved for the record.
