Via RCP, here’s one more in the long list of reasons to dread Hillary’s inevitable nomination. It also makes it inevitable that America’s going to refight this old battle, replete with enlightened progressives — many of them women — grasping for ways on television to dismiss presidential intern-shtupping with variations of “she was good to go.” In fairness, Marcus gets points for degree of difficulty here, framing this defense of the Clenis as a knock on the GOP for allegedly viewing women through some sort of virgin/whore lens. In other words, Rand Paul’s critique, which was designed to parry the left’s endless “war on women” nonsense, is itself proof of the Republican war on women. It’s not the guy who exploited a tremendous power disparity with his subordinate for some sexual fun who’s the main offender. It’s Paul, for noticing and thinking Lewinsky was something of a victim in a situation like that.

I know it’s early, but can we set a ground rule for this topic going forward? Ground rule: If you’re defending Bill Clinton on this, please at least dispense with the wholly perfunctory “President Clinton did a bad thing, but…” caveat. Just own it. It was a private matter, Monica was over 18, he needed to bust a nut and knew she had a crush, and that’s it. At the very, very least, let’s have no smirky references to “thong-flashing” that would have set off a media panic on the left if a Republican columnist had said the same thing in semi-defense of a GOP president who’d behaved as Clinton did.

As for Rand bringing this up in the first place, I go back and forth between thinking it’s foolish to give Hillary a chance to remind the public of her victimization (victimhood being a core component of her campaign to come) and clever in making Democrats generally and Bill in particular think twice before throwing around “war on women” charges. More than anything, though, I can’t believe Democrats are going to foist this baggage on us again. We’re going to spend another two years, and maybe four years after that, and then maybe four years after that — 10 years! — neck deep in Clinton drama. Again. I don’t have the energy. I need to blog something less exhausting, like the Middle East.