Hillary Clinton may be the gift that keeps on giving for the Republican Party, but we hope hers won't be the face of the fall campaign for the GOP.
A year and a half after the stunning upset that sent Donald Trump to the White House and the former first lady, senator and secretary of state to the sidelines, she refuses to go away. Though she has declared she has no plans to run again, the media that was obsessed and enamored with her in 2016 still treats her every appearance and utterance as if she were the president.
Unfortunately, those words aren't always elegant or eloquent and often sound desperate. Her excuses for losing are varied and legion, and now many of her fellow Democrats are no longer censoring their comments.
Asked recently when Clinton would "ride off into the sunset," Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., whose seat is vulnerable in the fall, said, "Not soon enough."
And if she keeps putting herself in front of the public, her comments are fair game. But we believe Republicans have plenty of other reasons voters should punch their ticket in November.
The tax cut and the economy are reason No. 1. The tax cut Republicans passed in December has put more money in Americans' pockets, seen many of those same Americans get bonuses and have allowed numerous businesses to expand. McKee Foods Corp. of Collegedale, maker of Little Debbie snacks, and Dollywood, the amusement park in Pigeon Forge, are two of the most recent Tennessee businesses to announce employee bonuses.
Consumer confidence has hovered close to an 18-year high reached in February, the labor market is healthy and stock prices are still in near-record territory.
Republicans who voted for the tax cut could use Clinton's words about it being "a blatant and insulting attack on working Americans," but current office-holders made equally partisan statements.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., for example, claimed "this tax bill will be an anchor around the ankles of every Republican" in November.
The words of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., though, describing "the crumbs that [the tax cuts] are giving to workers," deservedly have gained the most traction and ought to appear in at least one ad by every GOP office-holder running for re-election.
One of those Democrats who wasn't in office but probably should have left the "crumbs" comment alone was former Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen.
Bredesen, a nice man who was a moderate governor and will have to tack significantly to the center to win a senatorial election in a state Trump won by 16 points, echoed Pelosi in a recent interview with The New York Times.
"I think they did something which was clever politically," he said, "which is I think they threw a few crumbs to the middle class. And I think I would have called that out as strongly as I possibly could have."
U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, the Republican senatorial front runner for the fall, should use Bredesen's words over and over.
Currently, the former governor is enjoying a meaningless, small lead at the polls, but this actually should scare him. Since most opinion polls are weighted toward Democratic voters and most polls more than six months before the election favor the party not in power, the true measure of voters' opinions is probably a bit different from what the polls show.
Bredesen is also getting the upside of media exposure about retiring Sen. Bob Corker's comments on the former governor. But Corker's made them before, at least a week and a half ago, and this round is not anything new, except that it - like his previous words - is likely to wind up in Bredesen campaign ads.
Last week, Corker called Bredesen "a very good mayor, a very good governor, a very good business person." He also said the former governor was "a friend of mine" and had "real appeal" and "crossover appeal." Let's face it, though, as state finance commissioner in the 1990s, Corker worked with then-Nashville Mayor Bredesen to bring the Tennessee Titans to Nashville, and as a former Chattanooga mayor and then U.S. senator, he worked with then-Gov. Bredesen to bring Volkswagen's auto assembly plant to Chattanooga.
But he also reiterated he had given the maximum amount of money to Blackburn - though he didn't call her name - and said he would vote for her.
Love him or hate him, Trump has a 56-42 percent approval-disapproval rating in Tennessee in an NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll. In the same poll, Corker has a 48-47 approval-disapproval rating. Blackburn, meanwhile, has both been supportive of Trump and supported by Trump.
Neither she nor other Republicans need to beat the dead horse that is Clinton in the fall. Fortunately for them and for the country, there are other wells to tap.