Posted on 02/12/2005 8:24:00 AM PST by Carl/NewsMax
Though she barely escaped prosecution just a few years ago for making false statements to federal investigators, New Yorkers now believe that Sen. Hillary Clinton is a truthful person.
Nearly two-thirds of Empire Staters - 64 percent - told a Quinnipiac University survey last week that the former first lady was "honest and trustworthy." Thirty percent disagreed.
Even among Republicans, 38 percent gave Hillary high marks for honesty. Among Democrats, the figure was a sky-high 85 percent.
Quinnipaic's polling director Maurice Carroll said Hillary's new honesty numbers were a big improvement from the old days.
"When Clinton took office four years ago, her husband had just pardoned Marc Rich and the Clintons were accused of looting White House furniture," he noted. Sounding somewhat bewildered, Carroll mused, "Now? Two-thirds of New Yorkers say she's a good - and honest - Senator."
'Honest' Hillary's new image also has to come as a shock to former independent counsel Robert Ray, who nearly indicted her for lying in the Travelgate scandal.
"Mrs. Clinton . . . played a role in the decision to fire the [travel office] employees and thus, her statement to the contrary under oath to this office is factually false," Ray said in his final report on the imbroglio.
Despite the scathing conclusion, the top lawman gave the first lady the benefit of the doubt and didn't file charges, saying he couldn't prove she knew her testimony was false.
Ray's predecessor, Ken Starr, also came perilously close to fling charges against Hillary for her Whitewater fibs.
In their book "Truth at any Cost," reporters Susan Schmidt and Michael Weisskopf detailed a 1998 meeting between Starr's lead prosecutor Hickman Ewing and his legal team in Little Rock, where they weighed indicting Hillary:
"[Ewing] paced the room for more than three hours, recalling facts from memory," Schmidt and Weisskopf reported. "He spoke passionately, laying out a case that the first lady had obstructed government investigators and made false statements about her legal work for [Jim] McDougal's S&L, particularly the thrift's notorious multimillion-dollar Castle Grande real estate project."
However, Ewing's case against Mrs. Clinton had been severely weakened by the fact that Mr. McDougal had died a month before.
"Without him, prosecutors would have a hard time describing the S&L dealings they suspected Hillary Clinton had lied about," Schmidt and Weisskopf said.
Another person sure to be shocked by Hillary's new reputation for honesty is media mogul Steven Brill, who accused her of falsely claiming she helped 9/11 victim families while he was writing his 2003 book, "After."
Brill told WABC Radio that her staff had provided him with "an elaborate story, with an elaborate subtext of memos and phone calls - a long, long story" detailing Hillary's meetings with 9/11 relatives.
But after checking with the families themselves, Brill said, "None of it turned out to be true . . . They gave me documents and phone calls and things like that which just plain never happened."
Any math people that can crunch the minimum population sample size to get these alleged numbers? I suspect it was a very small sample size with a college demographic.
This false impression has been built up over the years by people who say, "I may not agree with her, but I respect the fact that she stands up for what she believes and says what she thinks..." and blah and blah and yada and puke and gag me with a big old gnarly spoon. I've heard that or something like it countless times. Humans are stupid.
MM
Yep, there's a hell of a lot more than acid rain coming down in the NE!
Yes... the very reason Ken Starr was installed as lead White Wash foreman.. which he(Starr) proceeded to white wash the gate and left the whole entire rest of the fence to degrade.. as an eyesore to the Washington D.C. community.. It is STILL un painted too..
Don.t forget Ron Brown and the corpulent private detective out of Little Rock. I believe the Arkencide list will grow if Hillary is elected. Isn't it interesting that there have been no analogous deaths regarding this Bush administration or the preclinton Bush Administration. I wonder if there is selective serendipidy or were the Clintons involveded in in these killings. Something to consider.
either Hillary is the new Teflon don or that is a statement on how untrustworthy (John Kerry) the rest of the Democratic party (John Kerry) must appear.....
she has done a good job since becoming Senator in not letting herself get embroiled in any controversy -and dare I say it, has she actually done something for New York? has she brought lots of pork barrel to the state or what? or did she do a good job of making it look like she has done something positive?
and with a Republican governor and Republican mayor of NYC you can just blame the Republicans for any ills in NY state....
and lest we forget the liberal MSM was covering the indiscretions of the Clintons and made them look like the victims and the Republicans the bad guys, even though the Democrats have been behaving just as appalling and indeed worse since Bush was installed in office...
Carl, this is a shocker? C'MON, although you live in TR's hometown of Oyster Bay, you KNOW what the typical Tri-State area voter is like! I've lived 21 of my 28 years in NY and the only thing that shocks me is that the figure wasn't 80%.
This isn't really surprising. New Yorkers like Hillary. They already voted for her once, and they just finished giving Chuckie Schumer a huge electoral win.
Besides, hillary is a much better liar than bill. She looks painfully earnest, whereas bill has a sly smile that makes him look like a hillbilly used car salesman.
A lot of folks like bill, regretably, but they never believed he was truthful. They just enjoy his lies. When hillary lies, there's nothing to laugh about. She does it with a grim face. So her supporters can't laugh them off, they just have to pretend they aren't there.
Uh, NY is part of the Mid-Atlantic, NOT NEW ENGLAND.
True.. a disgusting story really..
Almost as disgusting as, "I'm a Unite'er not a divider".. to all that.. One would think dividing from "all that" would be the prime requiste. What I'm lookin for is a hard nosed "divider".. Uniteing with democrats, ANY democrats is a filthy business.. a nasty bi-partisan fiasco..
how about hiring look-a-likes of Foster and McDougal to appear near Hillary anytime she's in the public?
NY is, after all, one of the blue-est of Blue states.
http://www.princeton.edu/~rvdb/JAVA/election2004/purple_america_20
I looked at this map and I see alot of purple and red..and very few spots of pure blue. As compared to other pockets of blue across the country..it seems rather small...but then again NYC is packed like sardines. There are many people in NY with there heads on straight...most of whom live outside the city. I really hate being called derogatory names as a New Yorker. Isn't there some way of differentiating the blue city from the rest of the state? I'd appreciate it...thanks
Rats!! the link didn't work. Does anyone have a link to the purple county map?
You and others are making a huge mistake if you disbelieve these numbers.
I, for one, believe them. Most people have no idea of the state of the record and just have a certain image of her.
If she is honest both of my parents were Black (I am very pale skin colored). That is the problem with not indicting, she gets to claim she was investigated to death for nothing.
It was a joke. I meant to demonstrate my lack of confidence in the survey sample's honesty by making what I thought would be an obviously ridiculous statement.
I have absolutely zero indication that it was done even partially in that Hasidic community (which really exists and really did vote in lock step for Hillary in her election - there was an investigation, but they couldn't prove any criminal act occurred).
To anyone who doesn't get it, DO NOT go spreading my sarcastic post around as if it were actually true.
I don't doubt that the sample for this poll is horribly skewed, but I am not claiming to have any direct information to back up that suspicion.
Admin: anyway to get a </sarcasm> or some other disclaimer added to my post #17 on this thread? Given the obvious scrutiny we are under right now I don't want anyone to be able to take anything I say out of context or misinterpret it, particularly if it might be used as an attack on FR (or me, sorry for being selfish).
Failing that please pull my post #17.
Thankyou
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.