In my last post, I suggested that Obama-hatred and Clinton-hatred were not much different in intensity and number of adherents, but that there are other reasons to explain Clinton hatred, leaving racism as a major explanation for the right’s crazy abomination of Barack Obama.   Ed Kilgore of the Washington Monthly has come up with a very perceptive post today that is relevant to that discussion. His general point: Clinton hatred reflected the right’s discomfiture at the changing role of women:

Many conservatives sincerely believe that abandonment of a stoutly patriarchal society has been a disaster for women: they’ve lost the stability of “traditional marriage,” the presumption men will be held accountable for their material welfare, the chivalric accommodation of their weaknesses, the ability to concentrate on child-rearing and home-making, and most of all, the exemption from the terrible burdens of bread-winning, decision-making, and sexual autonomy….Unsurprisingly, the Clintons have always fascinated conservatives as symbols of the dark side of post-patriarchal society: the mendacious man-boy endlessly on the prowl for female flesh married to the hardened, de-feminized striver.