https://reason.com/blog/2018/01/25/conservatisms-not-so-secret-society-of-o

It's that sense of undisguised opportunism, and facially ridiculous connect-the-dots hyperbole, that has come to mark conservative pushback against the Russia investigation. The initially context-less phrase "secret society" was contained in a single text message sent to a single, long-fired member of Mueller's team of three dozen. Yet that was evidence aplenty for hardened sleuths like the Boston Herald's Howie Carr: "The crooked cops even had a name for their Democrat cabal - the Secret Society. It's all laid out in black and white, in the post-election texts the FBI neglected to delete as part of their ongoing obstruction of justice."

There has been more "deep state" on the Fox networks this week than in an entire season of The X-Files. "The deep state strikes back," warned Laura Ingraham. "It may be time to declare war outright against the deep state and clean out the rot in the upper levels of the FBI and the Justice Department," Lou Dobbs thundered. "Talk about Watergate," Sean Hannity said last night, even after the "secret society" text was unearthed, "This is Watergate on steroids and human growth hormones. The constitutional violations are severe and historically unprecedented in this country. You have deep state actors using and abusing the powerful tools of intelligence that we give them to protect this country."

Much has been made, at Reason and elsewhere, and including under my byline, about the way that the media's anti-Trump obsession has led it down the path of hyperbole and comical error, serving to dull their overall critique of an eminently criticizable president. Well, the same and more can be said about the pro-Trump side of the aisle. When every subplot in the Russia investigation-Fusion GPS! Uranium One! Those temporarily missing text messages!-is literally "worse than Watergate," then the suspicion grows that maybe the next claim, no matter how steeped in real FBI misbehavior, will turn out to be vaporware, too.

Twenty years ago this Saturday, a prominent political personality was asked about allegations under investigation by a special counsel that the president had engaged in questionable conduct. "The great story here for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it," Hillary Clinton said then, "is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president."

Conservatives spent a generation mocking that bit of deflection. As happens all too predictably in American politics, they are now mimicking it.