After our “Get Clinton Conspiracy Working Group” successfully implanted a V-chip in Bill Clinton’s brain and made him say, “The era of big government is over,” it was now clear that our power and control were absolute. We were building a bridge to the 21st century for Bill. And the name of that bridge was Chappaquiddick.

We had come to control both political parties, although some Perotistas had to be expelled after they revealed at a Get Clinton board meeting that Ross was talking to them through their toasters. There were millions of charter members of the Get Clinton Conspiracy with the membership rolls now growing daily and new overseas chapters opening faster than Mr. Clinton could send in U.N. forces to stop us. But when we met at RFK stadium in 1994 and filled the Washington Mall from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial later that year – as I recounted in this space previously – Mr. Clinton and his staff still could only speculate about our existence.

With citizen Limbaugh, citizen Liddy, citizen North, citizen Barbour, citizen Dowd, citizen Weyrich, citizen Bozell and Benjamin Netanyahu directing our far-flung operations, we pressed forward with our “Get Clinton” conspiracy. We even got Mary Matalin, a card carrying member of our Group, to call James Carville a “rabid dog” on national television. Some of the less courageous members of the Group thought this rather harsh of Mary, until Mr. Carville was spotted at the Palm scratching his left ear with his hind leg.

We took on other little projects just to keep our skills sharp. For instance, we chased Clintonites out of the White House and out of town just for the sport of it. The original red diaper baby, George Stephanopoulos, took jobs with a cable access company and a community college as a part-time, associate professor’s assistant. Paul Begala, a quadruped, but a political fille de joie, left Washington and created the “Class M Planet Society.” He was a big hit at Star Trek and Kennedy conspiracy confabs.

Because there was too much money at stake in keeping Mr. Clinton right where we could keep an eye on him, the Get Clinton Conspiracy ensured he would win re-election by placing into Bob Dole’s presidential effort individuals we knew we could rely on to run an incompetent campaign. They did a masterful job.

In the late summer of 1996, however, it got a little dicey as it appeared in our hourly tracking polls that Mr. Dole might close the race to only 70-30. That’s when we decided to take care of Jack Kemp’s debate prep and send him to Harlem in search of gold standard Republicans. Also, David Bossie told John Huang that it was “OK” to drop off sackfuls of Indonesian rupiahs at Chris Dodd’s Senate offices. Judicial Watch head Larry Klayman then videotaped Mr. Dodd and Ted Kennedy counting the money under a table at the Monocle restaurant.

Other operatives inside the Clinton White House convinced Hillary that Craig Livingstone, a Nutrasystem-impaired bar bouncer, was the perfect choice to ensure that arms merchants and drug dealers got the time they needed with Clinton.

Our operation was running like a top. First, with money provided by Richard Viguerie from our off-shore slush funds, the Group underwrote subversive, anti-Clinton groups like the DAR and the American Legion. They then pushed anti-Clinton rumors on to the tabloids, the conservative media and then to Tass and the Socialist Worker’s Daily. The best one was the rumor that his distinguishing characteristic came from eating too many bananas so he could raise his blood pressure and be classified 4-F. Even Time magazine’s Margaret Carlson fell for that one.

Serial liberals and Vichy Republicans were an especially favorite target of ours, as we had stolen the 1994 congressional elections from them and convinced Mr. Clinton that the American people really wanted to stand in line to get aspirin from their government and have their Second Amendment rights taken away.

At our last meeting, new member Evan Thomas of Newsweek suggested the mother of all projects for the Get Clinton Conspiracy. “Knowing the Clintons’ paranoia, why don’t we convince them to use taxpayers dollars to write a report that we do exist and suggest that they then leak it to the media, then get Mike McCurry to stand up before the White House press corps to defend it. They’ll then be humiliated for thinking we exist and even though we do exist, they don’t know we exist and can’t prove we exist,” Mr. Thomas said.

We all thought this was wonderful. Suddenly, ersatz Republicans Kevin Phillips, David Gergen and Ed Rollins tried to crash our conspiracy meeting. But when our CIA agents notified them that CNN was looking for a Republican to trash Republicans, they scurried back to their offices to try to get on the show. The plan moved forward and a Rapid Report Team was assembled in the White House. A banner, to boost morale of the workers there, was hoisted. It said, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.” Hillary came by too with freshly baked cookies. She told the assemblage that “paranoiacs have enemies too!”

As Mr. Thomas predicted, the report was met by the populace and the media with ridicule and derision. Another success! Washington pundit John McLaughlin called the “Get-Clinton- Media-Feeding-Frenzy-Reporte rs-as-Conservative-Stooges-Conspiracy-Report” “a tour de farce … proof positive paranoia.” We sent him a note of congrats on his alliteration.

To celebrate our latest achievement, the National Rifle Association hosted a party. Spirits went even higher when Michael Kelly, Ken Starr, Paula Jones, Clarence Thomas, Harold Ikes, Antonin Scalia, David Watkins and Richard Cohen put in surprise appearances. Richard Scaife passed out bonus checks.

Life was good in the Get Clinton Conspiracy Working Group.

Craig Shirley is a GOP consultant.

LOAD-DATE: January 29, 1997

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1997 The Washington Times LLC All Rights Reserved