Posted on 03/04/2004 1:23:02 AM PST by nickcarraway
WASHINGTON -- Do my eyes deceive me? The morning after Super Tuesday expired with a burst of fireworks enhaloing the hunk of granite that is John Kerry's head, Senator Hillary Clinton -- still the most popular Democrat in the country -- pops up at Washington's Mayflower Hotel to give a major speech on trade and manufacturing, two burning issues during the Democrats' primary season. What can this mean?
Several weeks back as Senator Kerry emerged as the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, that veteran Clinton-watcher with the keen eye for political machinations, Dick Morris, announced that Hillary had become a likely prospect as Kerry's running mate.
Morris's observation makes sense. Kerry is a regional candidate. Hillary has national reach. She is the most popular Democratic candidate in the land. Owing to her feminism and to her cachet with the other building blocks of the Democratic coalition she could, as Morris puts it, turn the presidential campaign into a "national crusade." Moreover, with the vast financial resources she commands, she could be for Kerry's campaign what his wife has been for Kerry's lifestyle, a bonanza.
What is more, sources have told me that Clinton loyalists have been calling Democrats around the country telling them to prevail on Kerry at least to invite Hillary to be on his ticket. Kerry needs help. For most of his senatorial career he has been a loner, and the source of too many bizarre utterances. As recently as December his candidacy was dead in the water. Kerry has not been the consensus Democratic candidate. Rather, he is the candidate the consensus has settled on.
Hillary is at the center of the party. Some would say she sits atop it. The Clintons' servitor, Terry McAuliffe, heads the Democratic National Committee. Her political action committees are prodigious fundraising mechanisms. Another of her servitors, Harold Ickes, controls financial honey pots with reserves of over $100 million. Thus Hillary is the most likely source of prestige and funding for the impecunious Kerry.
More recently, sources tell me that long-time Clinton supporters including those in the now defunct Clark campaign have been told to sit tight and await unfolding events as though "something big" is about to happen. And Hillary's fund-raising operations have curiously slowed. She has been the top Democratic fundraising draw since 2000. But three months ago her fundraising appearances seemingly fell off. In the last election cycle she did four to five fundraisers a week. Now she is down to one or two.
With her early morning speech just after Super Tuesday she may be approaching that "something big" that her old supporters have been promised. In addressing trade and manufacturing at the Mayflower on Wednesday she confronts two staples of Ralph Nader's song and dance, a song and dance that will be heard many times as his third party candidacy gets underway. Nader's candidacy could become a political "giant sucking sound" of votes away from Kerry. At the Mayflower Hillary demonstrates her political value to Kerry as a neutralizer of Nader.
It makes perfect sense for Hillary to get into the Democratic presidential action now. She has enormous power, and as with all political power if you do not use it you run the risk that you might lose it. Running as veep on a Kerry ticket might not doom her to second fiddle for eight years. The trial might last only eight months, and if the valiant ticket goes down to the hellish Bush she would be seen as the loyalest of loyal Democrats, a Joan of Arc to her party. Her rights on the presidential nomination in 2008 would be secure.
Then too, some shocking revelations might surface about Senator John Pierre Kerry before convention time. Things like that have happened before in this Democratic race. Ask Dr. Howard Dean. Come to think of it, ask Kerry. In that event, Hillary, the loyalest of the loyal, would be there to lift the party from chaos and against the Forces of Darkness. Whatever transpires, the Clintons are active again.
R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. is editor in chief of The American Spectator, a contributing editor to the New York Sun, and an Adjunct Fellow at the Hudson Institute. His Madame Hillary: The dark Road to the White House has just been published by Regnery Publishing.
Landing very, very suddenly in a field near you!
Harold McEwen Ickes (Harold M. Ickes), a New York lawyer and lobbyist, served from 1994 until late in 1996 as Deputy Chief of Staff in the William Jefferson Clinton Administration. Ickes' firm -- Ickes and Enright Group -- is part of Washington D.C.-based lobbying firm Griffin Johnson Dover & Stewart.
Ickes chaired Clinton's presidential campaign in New York in 1992. Before that, Ickes was a senior advisor to David Dinkins' successful mayoral election. He returned to private life in 1997. Ickes' father (Harold LeClaire Ickes (1874-1952)[1]) served as U.S. Secretary of the Interior (1933-1946) during the Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration.
Ickes was linked to a series of scandals and investigations at the Clinton White House:
Travelgate
See Harold Ickes' Deposition made June 14, 1996, to the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, U.S. House of Representatives.
Monica Lewinski Scandal
Labor Union/Teamsters Campaign Funding
Ickes is said to have "represented many labor unions over the years. Some of those unions -- the Laborers, Local 100 of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union in New York, Teamsters Local 239 in New York, and the District Council of Carpenters in New York -- have extensive ties to organized crime, according to federal prosecutors. In fact, Ickes's ties to corrupt unions were so extensive that the White House deemed it impossible to nominate him for a job that required Senate confirmation and placed him instead in the position of deputy chief of staff."[2]
"In the financial disclosure statement that Ickes was required to file upon entering the White House, he says he left his law firm (Meyer, Suozzi, English & Klein) in December 1993. Ickes listed two Laborers union organizations among the 199 clients he handled between 1989 and 1993. Those organizations were the Laborers and Employers Cooperation and Education Trust and the Laborers New York State Political Action Committee. Both were groups that engaged in lobbying and political activity for the union."[3]
She can start as V.P., and work her way into the top job.
“Work her way”, If Mr. Kerry gets the White House, he had best watch out for fatal accidents.
He would be wiser to book a room for a week at the Bates Motel!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.