Funny, isn’t it, how the Trump campaign really, really wants us to be talking about that thing that Donald Trump ostentatiously didn’t quite say on Monday night. Adultery expert Newt Gingrich thinks Trump “was a gentleman” and “proved that he had the discipline to remain as a decent guy” by not explicitly talking about Bill Clinton’s past behavior The twice-divorced Trump is not concerned about how the issue might bring up his own history, because “I have a very good history.” They really think they have a winning line here. All this has Republicans who remember how this all played out in the 1990s and/or have tested the issue with actual voters cringing and head-desking:

Tim Miller and Katie Packer, two Republican strategists who oppose Trump, conducted focus groups before the primaries where they tested attacks tied to the former president's sex scandals with female swing voters. They concluded it was a political dead end. "These voters were completely turned off and disgusted by it," Miller said in an e-mail. "We found time and again these attacks turned Hillary into a victim and that it engendered sympathy for her."

Greg Sargent has a theory that this isn’t a lead-up to putting Hillary Clinton on the spot in a debate:

No, what’s probably going on here is that the Trump campaign is trying to get the media to talk about the idea that Hillary’s supposed enabling of Bill’s affairs should somehow undercut her highlighting of Trump’s misogyny and chauvinism. That’s why Trump and his advisers keep telling the press that Trump himself didn’t bring up Bill’s affairs at the debate — even though he could have! — out of respect for Chelsea Clinton…oh, and by the way, political reporters, make sure you mention Bill’s affairs and Hillary’s alleged enabling of them in your stories about Trump’s self-restraint!

Now, any theory that relies on Donald Trump’s impulse control when he’s been challenged is subject to being abruptly undone when he loses his temper. But this certainly seems like the plan right now. Send out surrogates to talk about the Clintons’ past incessantly just to keep it in the news, especially as a distraction from Trump’s grotesque attacks on former Miss Universe Alicia Machado.

For her part, Hillary Clinton simply said “no” when asked if it was her responsibility to “speak out on a spouse’s indiscretions or past.”

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