Posted on 05/16/2005 7:00:14 AM PDT by yoe
Hillary Clinton has moved to the centre in preparation for 2008. It's become a cliché — so self-evidently true that it shows up not merely in editorials but in news articles as well.
One of the reasons it's so uncontroversial is that it seems innocuous, even flattering.
But, in fact, the "Hillary shifts to the centre" line isn't innocuous at all. It's crucial to the campaign that conservatives will wage against her in coming years. That campaign is likely to revolve around character.
In the 1980s, Republicans demonized Democrats as ultra-liberals. But once Bill Clinton moved the party to the centre in the '90s, that argument became less effective. And so in the past three presidential elections — 1996, 2000 and 2004 — Republicans have focused less on what Democratic candidates believe than on whether they believe anything at all.
As the New Republic's Jonathan Chait has noted, Clinton, Al Gore and John Kerry were each called flip-floppers — politicians willing to say anything to get elected. Those three GOP campaigns were all variations on the same theme: The Democrat running for president has no moral core.
Now the drumbeat is starting with Hillary Clinton. This fall, a conservative imprint will publish The Truth About Hillary: What She Knew, When She Knew It, and How Far She'll Go to Become President, by Edward Klein. Its publisher boasts, "Just as the Swift Boat Veterans convinced millions of voters that John Kerry lacked the character to be president, Klein's book will influence everyone who is sizing up the character of Hillary Clinton." The "Hillary moves to the centre" storyline dovetails perfectly with this character attack: How far will Clinton "go to become president"? So far she'll radically change what she believes.
When Clinton recently said that religion played a central role in her life, New York Conservative party leader Michael Long told The New York Times, "All of a sudden she is saying she has these deep convictions ... I don't believe that. It's clear to me that she is getting ready to launch her candidacy for the presidency and she will become whatever she has to become to appeal to centrist voters." Implicitly endorsing that view, the Times headline read, "As Clinton shifts themes, debate arises on her motives."
But she wasn't shifting themes at all. In May 1993, in a long profile in the same New York Times, Clinton spoke at length about her Christian youth group, about theologians such as Paul Tillich and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and about her guest sermons for the United Methodist Church.
In the same article, Clinton attacks "rights without responsibilities," endorses welfare reform and lavishes praise on an article by Daniel Patrick Moynihan called "Defining deviancy down," which argued that Americans were tolerating more and more anti-social behaviour.
In truth, Clinton was basically as "centrist" when she entered the national stage in the early 1990s as she is today.
In fact, Clinton used the same formulation on abortion — "safe, legal and rare" — that her husband did. And she kept public funding for abortion out of her famed health-care plan, recognizing that it was too controversial. On national security, where Clinton has been quite hawkish since entering the Senate, the public record is slim. But if there's little evidence she backed military intervention in places such as Bosnia, there's little evidence she opposed it either.
So why has the press been so quick to call her centrism a dramatic shift?
Partly it's because, in the post-Bill Clinton years, many Democrats did move away from language such as "safe, legal and rare" on abortion. So, when Hillary Clinton recently returned to it, she was breaking with others in her party, if not herself.
But there is something deeper: The unstated assumption that high-profile women, especially feminists, must — in their hearts — be dovish, relativistic and secular. Republicans will exploit that stereotype in their effort to keep Clinton from the Oval Office. But before playing along, the press should first figure out whether it's actually true.
Peter Beinart is editor of the New Republic and a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution.
Begins???? Where's this guy been for the past 13 years?
Let me see if I understand this: Because Hillary said a kind word about organized religion once in 1993, the charges (probably instituted by Karl Rove)about her moving to the center to enable her election in 2008, are unfounded, unfair, evil comments by the evil Republicans (led by Karl Rove)?
Makes sense to me.
I quit reading with that sentence.
Sucking up to the Clintons.
What planet did this happen on? or what dimension? or what alternate universe? I must'a missed it.........
Well, if a man with these credentials says she's a Centrist, then I guess she is. I mean, he wouldn't be interested in passing off a leftwing extremist as a centrist, would he?
Now this is an insult. She speaks politics in a church and they call it a guest sermon?
LOL....okay, something is printed in the NY Slimes and that settles the question once and for all!
Rigggggggggggghhhhhhhhht.
Hillary was hiding her real leftist, Commie, Saul-Alinsky-trained leanings.
I like her f***** Jew comment the best. And yet, her Muslim gas station "joke" might just beat that.
Took the words right outta my mouth...
Down with Hitlery "Taking from you for the common good" Marxton!
Just say no to the lying communist.
;-)
He's been editing the New Republic, that's where he's been.
Is America really ready for another eight years of the Clintons?? Make no mistake, if the Witch of New York wins, the bent one will be right there too... never happen unless they bend the rules like they did before and got away with it.
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