I think people like Sean Hannity secretly wish Clinton were the president. They make their livings by stoking outrage in their listeners and that’s way easier to do when the Others control the government. You can see it here too: sure they try and defend Trump somewhat but where they really shine is alleging more Clinton conspiracies.
She’s been politically irrelevant for a year now and Republicans are still furiously attempting to smear her in order to distract from their own failures. It’s the only playbook they know.
I don't think there's any question about this. The modern GOP functions well only when they are opposing. This applies to the current Congress--you can see how prepared they were after seven years with a well-thought-out health plan; they came up with something that looked like two interns did it over the weekend. They not only thought Hillary would win, I bet they wanted her to win. They could have continued doing what they did with Obama: paint her as the boogeyman and shoot down every effort she made to get anything done, amidst deafening cheers from the faithful for their "defense of the Heartland and American Values (tm)".
Not that the Democrats are much better, but they don't seem as eager to seek out boogeymen to lay all the problems on. I mean, commies, darkies, socialists, gays, muslims, liberals...the list goes on and on, so many enemies at the gate! Who but the GOP will save us?!