Posted on 08/16/2005 10:34:18 AM PDT by MikeA
Westchester DA Jeanine Pirro is about to formally announce her candidacy for Senate from New York, which will pit her against Hillary in a battle royal. This is just the kind of fight that Sen. Clinton would have hoped to avoid.
While Hillary would have no problem dispatching an opponent like Nixon son-in-law Edward Cox or Yonkers Mayor John Spencer (the two other possible GOP contenders), Pirro presents a real problem.
Jeanine Pirro is pro-choice, pro-gun control, pro-affirmative action, pro-gay-civil unions and pro-immigration. And, of course, she's a woman.
In a sense, Hillary will have to end up running against someone who is quite like herself in her public positions: Except, of course, Pirro is a good old-fashioned anti-tax, anti-crime, tough-on-terror Republican from the suburbs.
Hillary would love to cloak her Senate re-election as a necessity in the face of a determined GOP effort to overturn Roe vs. Wade and to roll back the clock on gun controls. But against Pirro, she will be disarmed of all her best issues. She will have to run on her own record, which is limited at best.
Pirro, on the other hand, can point out that Hillary refuses to say that she will serve out her term if elected — since we all know that the day the returns are in she will start her campaign for president. (Hillary has her own twist on the famous line of Gen. Sherman: "If elected, I refuse to serve").
The Quinnipiac Poll recently found that Hillary beat Pirro by more than 30 percentage points — but in the same poll, 60 percent of the state's voters said that Mrs. Clinton should pledge to serve out her full term if she runs for the Senate.
Jeanine looks weak in the polls right now because she only has about a 30 percent level of real name recognition statewide. But the fact that about one Hillary voter in three says that Mrs. Clinton should promise not to run for president if she seeks re-election to the Senate is an indication that all will not be well for her as she seeks a second term.
If Hillary faced a right-wing opponent, voters would overlook her refusal to promise to serve if elected — but with Pirro, they may come to feel that they have a choice. Recently, Pirro indicated, for example, that she would join the bi-partisan group of 14 senators who promised to save the Senate from destruction by pledging to support reasonable judicial nominees and to refrain from unreasonable filibusters.
And Pirro doesn't need to beat Hillary to wound her. If she finishes less than the 12 points behind Clinton that Rick Lazio managed in the 2000 election, it will be a victory of sorts. Hillary will have some explaining to do to tell why fewer New Yorkers wanted her to be re-elected than voted for her in the first place.
And, at some point, Mrs. Clinton may feel Pirro gaining on them and wonder if it is worth the battle.
It's worth remembering that Hillary did not want Bill to run for re-election for governor of Arkansas in 1990 as he contemplated a race for president in 1992. (Back then she had a better idea: She would run in his place!)
Hillary almost has a lock on the Democratic nomination in 2008 and can build up a massive financial and political lead over all possible rivals. But if she is engaged in a nip-and-tuck battle in New York to keep what she already has, she will have to divert $30 million or $40 million from her presidential race and spend her time in Rochester, rather than in Iowa.
If Pirro posts some early gains, particularly upstate, where it is cheap to do early advertising, Hillary and Bill may read the handwriting on the wall and she may pull out of the race.
These are the issues Pirro is likely to have impact on in the Senate, not abortion, gay rights nor affirmative action which is all happening in the courts. Pirro is running for Senate, not Supreme Court justice. And she will be a reliable vote for Bush's judge nominees which is in itself reason to support her.
Yes Pirro may not be as conservative as I am, but I also realize she's running in New York State, not Alabama. If we hope to get rid of Hillary from the Senate, or at least do enough damage to her in her re-election bid so she'll have to bleed resources from her presidential campaign into the Senate race, then we have to be a little pragmatic and support someone like Pirro who can send her limping into the '08 White House race.
Even holding Hillary to a low re-election win will make her damaged goods in '08 and make the Democratic primary more of a fight and less of an annoiting than it otherwise would have been.
Again, let's look at those issues Pirro will have influence over in the Senate. It's not likely to be any of the social issues since those are in the courts. It's not even likely to be gun control since no Dems. dare touch the issue anymore. It's likely to be those issues where Pirro is appropriately conservative, on national security and economic issues.
Let's not undermine her over issues she'll have little to do with or a stumbling opening performance in her announcement bid. Candidates learn from these mistakes and better they happen early in the campaign rather than later. Let's focus on the fact she is the most likely candidate to serve as the final undertaker on the disreputable and ugly Clinton era and finally put it to rest, both in the Senate and in the White House, and to finally send the message to these two insufferable ego-maniacs "America is bored of you. Go away!"
Isn't Dick Morris notoriously wrong?
more or less she sounds like a female version of Rudy Giuliani....
He wasn't about the November 2004 re-election, that Bush would win. Morris has a political nose and instinct that shouldn't be underestimated.
Just when he talks about Presidential elections or Hillary. Of course that is usually what he talks about.
That's a good way to put it, but with more hair.
So if we have to have a Hillary type in NY, at least let her be nominally on our side of the aisle and have Hillary's White House hopes laying in ruins.
He ended up saying that at the end, but he vacillated on that opinion throughout the campaign.
I was gonna start in with the tired and uninspired labelling of Morris as "usually wrong."
I can certainly understand conservatives being upset with constantly being told to support the lesser of two evils rather than an authentic conservative.
But you are right, I believe, in saying that New York is so liberal and that Hillary Clinton is such a danger that this is a good case to support Pirro.
i do hope she gets the national support and funds from Republicans that a Clinton opponent deserves.
And without the prostate cancer.
This column was written a weeg ago and posted a week ago. I'm sure if you did a search for the original article others will have already covered the Morris is wrong theme. But it bears repeating, Morris is usually wrong.
This is a Republican?
Wow, another real RINO, I think I will stay home.
When it comes to defeating Hitlary, he knows her soft underbelly and is usually correct.
"He ended up saying that at the end, but he vacillated on that opinion throughout the campaign."
That's probably because it got dicey there for a time and it did look like Bush might not win, esp. with the weapons dump in Iraq crap the media blew all out of proportion crap. And perhaps at that point if the election were held Bush would have lost.
But Morris was saying at least a week before the election when the polls were neck and neck that Bush would win.
Regardless, Morris's analysis of the New York Senate race stands on its own regardless of past analysis he may have been right or wrong on. It's a sound one on its own merits.
A RINO in the best tradition of New York state.
"I'm sure if you did a search for the original article others will have already covered the Morris is wrong theme. But it bears repeating, Morris is usually wrong."
I did do a search. Nothing came up. It's not my fault if FR's search function sucks.
Regardless of the "usually wrong" thing which I disagree with in any event, judge the argument Morris makes based on its own merits not based on what he's done in the past. If you do that and you consider he's talking about New York State and not the Deep South, you'll see what he's saying is sound analysis.
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