During the 2012 campaign, Bill Clinton reentered political life for a brief moment, and it was electrifying: We remembered, in theory, that he was a great orator, but we'd actually forgotten how compelling he could be on a stage with a microphone. With Obama as the object of right-wing ire, Clinton was no longer a polarizing figure. Recent polls peg his current approval rating at almost 70 percent.

So a lot of folks in the political press were surprised when Senator Rand Paul, a presidential aspirant, started referring to former President Clinton as a sexual harasser on C-SPAN and later as a sexual predator in an interview with Newsmax. As Chris Cillizza would put it in a Washington Post article, "What gives?"

My colleague Peter Beinart suggests that the attacks are nothing more than a way for Paul to shore up his credibility with social conservatives skeptical of libertarians. He cites Clinton's popularity among Americans and women in particular. "Paul isn’t speaking to most Americans," he concludes, "he’s speaking to the Christian right." The observation that this could help Paul among conservative Christians is astute. But senators eyeing the White House say things that serve multiple purposes, and I believe Paul's strategy is about more than the religious right.

Asked about several of his Bill Clinton comments on Meet the Press, Paul himself offered this context: "the Democrats, one of their big issues is they have concocted and said Republicans are committing a war on women." Every Republican with presidential aspirations is gaming out the best way to respond to that Democratic campaign tactic, and this is part of Paul's answer. I expect we haven't seen the last of it. In fact, even if Paul himself never mentions Bill Clinton again, I suspect others in the GOP will deploy a similar tactic if Hillary Clinton runs for president and the 'War on Women' attack is deployed.

If You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em

Let's take a highly condensed look back at identity-based attacks on Republicans by Democrats. Over many years, Democrats found success defining the GOP as the party of racial insensitivity, with lots of assists from characters like Trent Lott and George Allen. There was a time, back in the 1990s, when the most typical Republican response would be to inveigh against political correctness and race-baiting. Figures on the right would accuse Democrats of cynically using race as a cudgel, and lament the immorality of making frivolous accusations of racism.

Some in the GOP still make those complaints.

But gradually, Republicans realized that the American people were never going to reject charges of racial insensitivity as a category. So they began to take a different approach: They tried to make the case that Democrats are "the real racists." Affirmative action became "reverse racism." Clarence Thomas accused Democratic Senators of a high-tech lynching. The Wall Street Journal editorial page complained that Democrats blocked Miguel Estrada's judicial nomination because they felt threatened by a Hispanic conservative. Some Republicans began referring to the Democratic Party as a "plantation." In time, Rush Limbaugh was making more frivolous accusations of racism than anyone in America.