Posted on 04/13/2005 1:10:44 PM PDT by Constitution Day
The Icewoman Cometh By Mark Steyn During the impeachment trial of blessed memory, I had a brief conversation with Sen. Barbara Boxer. “My duty is to the Constitution,” she said gravely. “My duty is to preserve our two-party democratic system. It’s up to the Democrats to save the Republican party from itself.” Warming to her theme, the petite brunette liberal extremist noted the latest Republican poll numbers — down somewhere between Robert Mugabe and the Ebola virus — and explained, “That’s not good for our democracy. This is a tragedy for the Republicans. The GOP has become the Get Our President party. That’s not the Republican party the people want. We have to reach out to them.” “Oh, come off it,” I said. Well, okay, I didn’t. Instead I nodded thoughtfully in a nonpartisan sort of way and marveled at the senator’s ability to reel off her bit with a straight face. Eventually, sensing a massive uncontainable guffaw rising in her gullet, Ms. Boxer wrapped it up and stepped into the Senate elevator. As the doors slid closed, muffled howls of laughter began to shake the Capitol, glass rattled in the windows, plaster fell from the ceiling . . . Politics affords few greater pleasures than offering one’s opponents some friendly but hopefully lethal piece of advice. We’re in one of those phases now — hence, the vogue for columns on the “Conservative Crackup,” a fearsome beast that, like the Loch Ness Monster, more and more folks claim to have spotted looming in the distance. In reality, the unrelieved gloom is on the Dem side of the ledger: The Republicans are all but certain to increase their majority in 2006. Whereas, if you want the state of the Democratic party in a single image, cut out the photograph from the New York Times the other day: a pumped Robert C. Byrd giving a clenched-fist salute at a MoveOn.org rally. That’s the Rainbow Coalition 2005 model: a dwindling band of ancient vindictive legislators yoked to a cash-flush unrepresentative fringe. It would actually be to the Democrats’ advantage if the Byrd-Kos union were to crack up, but instead their union seems merely cracked, like a miscast double-act thrown together by a desperate burlesque agent. There is, however, one exception to the Dems’ dance of death: President-presumptive Rodham Clinton. The chances of a Rodham restoration in the White House are better than even. For one thing, the salient feature of the Clintons’ Democratic party is that it was grand for the Clintons, disastrous for the party: The Dems lost everything — House, Senate, state legislatures, governorships — but somehow Bill and Hill were always the lone exceptions that proved the rule. Clinton couldn’t even bequeath the White House to his vice president in a time of “peace and prosperity,” yet the First Lady won an unprecedented victory in a state she’d never lived in. There is no reason to believe the Clintons’ historical immunity to their party’s remorseless decay will not continue. Second, the fact of a female candidate will send the media into orgies of diversity celebration. Right now, it’s the GOP with the star blacks (Rice), Hispanics (Martinez) and immigrants (Schwarzenegger), while the Dems are a sad collection of angry white males (Kennedy and Byrd). Were Condi to run against, say, Joe Biden in 2008, the press would play it strictly on the issues. But if it’s Bill Frist against Hill, get set for a non-stop cavalcade of stories with little inset photos of Mrs. Thatcher, Mrs. Gandhi, Mrs. Bandaranaike (Sri Lanka), Golda Meir, Benazir Bhutto, Helen Clark (New Zealand), etc., etc., and headlines like “Is America Ready?” that manage to imply ever so subtly that not voting for Hillary is the 2008 equivalent of declaring that Negroes are three-fifths of a human being. Yes, yes, I know — cattle futures, HillaryCare . . . That’ll be 16 years old on Election Day and nobody — or not enough — will care. Third, the senator is a quick learner. Her initial campaign stops in the 2000 race were embarrassing: stiff, evasive, that robotic I Speak Your Weight voice. By the end, she was almost charming — not lightly worn Fred-Astaire-romancing-Audrey-Hepburn charm; you could see she had to work at it. But nevertheless she did, and she succeeded. Smart folks adapt: For Republicans to assume they’ll be running against the Hillary of 1992 is a big mistake. When you look at her feints to the right in the post-9/11 era, what matters is not whether she believes them but that she’s the only Democrat with sufficient star quality to be able to ignore the deranged needs of UnableToMoveOn.org. Evan Bayh can’t — hence his pathetic vote against Condi. No male Democrat could get away with Hillary’s tentative moves away from Dem orthodoxy on abortion: Kerry was reduced to claiming that, while he personally believed life begins at conception, he would never let his deep personal beliefs interfere with his legislative program; Dean was practically offering to perform partial-birth abortions on volunteers from the crowd. But, if a woman runs as kinda-sorta-pro-life-ish, I’ll bet the NOW types decline to protest. Can Hillary be stopped? Obviously she can. But one lesson of the last 15 years is that the Democratic party is basically a dead husk — it’s as effective as whoever’s wearing it. In the Nineties, the Clintons swiped it. For the 2004 St. Vitus’s dance, Michael Moore and Barbra Streisand and MoveOn.org seized it and couldn’t make it work. But, if Hill takes it back . . . Don’t get me wrong. Biennial incremental gains by the GOP are set to continue for a while yet. But don’t be surprised if November 2008 is the usual day of disaster for Democrats in the Senate, House, and states, with the exception of Hillary’s election as president — and Chelsea’s stunning victory in the North Dakota governor’s race.
To Hill and back.
Exactly right. You can believe that the press and the intelligentsia will be pulling for her. Will the press have enough influence in four years? Who knows? The country will continue to move to the right for four years. Will it be enough? Who knows?
In fact, I would wager a princely sum that Hillary is already contriving circumstances for a renegade "Republican" to split the vote in her favor.
I have predicted many times, right here in FR, that that individual will be none other than John McCain; and, my reasoning is that he would lose in the early primaries, and do a vindictive little scorched earth toward the GOP. This assumes he is not Hillary's veep, which I also see as a possible scenario.
I base the above solely upon intuition and a level of suspicion that rarely rises within moi.
.
And if he refused to help her becoming the widow Clinton, which'd be an advantage for her as a candidate, she's pretty capable of resolving the problem herself... or isn't she?
If the widow Clinton wins this way, an obvious McCain's payoff could be a marriage to Mrs. President. A win/win situation: both get to the White House.
bump and thanks!
I pray you are right, but then I remember Jimmy Carter getting elected and I get depressed.
As I stated in post #74 ...
"Most people don't know just how liberal New York and that part of the Eastern seaboard is. Plus look at what happened. Rudy Giuliani pulled out and it was no contest."
Hillary is a lighting rod. Her nomination will, like you, spur Republicans, sane Democrats [?] and people who have never voted, to donate to and help the Republican Party and vote."
This isn't a Senate race. This isn't about what goodies [pork] New Yorkers can get out of a couple of pandering politicians. We are, and will be in 2008, at war. A war where the rubber meets the road. Hillary will be under the tires. ;)"
Whom ever runs for president from the Dimocrat side should make any sane, patriotic American nervous, as any Dimocrat presidency, now, will spell S E L L O U T to the American people
I've got to refrain from these Hitlary posts. With two years to go before we see all the cards, I will become a mumbling lunatic before the hand is dealt. ;)
Not to worry. We'll keep things hot and spicy here at home, you do what you must do in Iraq and stay safe. ;) Regards
The MSM will demonize the Republican candidate and Shrillary! will continue to pee champagne as far as they're concerned.
I'm afraid it will be tougher than we think to defeat her.
Yes, I did read your post. Lazio wasn't much of a candidate for sure, but I think her big victory shows that you can't rely too heavily on her "unelectability" to carry the day for the Republicans. Her negatives aren't what I thought they would be in the minds of voters. I lived in NY state much of my life, and while I would have predicted Hillary carrying NYC, that's not (contrary to what the media would tell you!) the whole state. Long Island, upstate NY, western NY... I figured she would not carry enough votes to win the seat. And I don't think pork for NY carried the day for her. I don't think many voters are educated enough about the process to think in those terms. I guess, put simply, I thought surely her negatives would outweigh her positives in a NY statewide election, and I was very wrong. It worries me...
I would offer that daily the MSM is in ever increasing competition from the internet for news and information.
How many were online in 1995? How many today? Like any technology, it begins advancing slowly, then like the proverbial snowball, it gathers momentum.
My thought is that this technology will roll right over the competition, (ie: Stalinists, Socialists, Comunists, etc. etc..
The larger problem is, with the thousands of fact and fallacy info bits out here, how do we separate that which is percieved truth from what is the actual truth. How does one combat that?
There are, afterall, only so many hours in a day.
If the Pubs don't put on the biggest national campaign against this woman being Commander In Chief and leader of the free world, by pointing out her lack of qualifications for either role.......
If Hillary is elected, it will be because of the group the MSM is targeting with this kind of propaganda: people who know Hillary isn't fit for the office, but who are so steeped in political correctness that they feel "kinda icky" about not voting for her.
It wouldn't be the first time the Republicans managed to take a winning position and lose with it.
My dream vision at the moment is that Condi stands up, declares that she has seen the light and is now pro-life, and runs for the presidency. Failing that, they will have to take some conservative southerner who is unknown to most of the country and make him known, with the liberal media obstructing every inch of the way.
Spot on. If Condi won't fulfill that dream scenario, then I think that conservative southerner will be Haley Barbour
As New Jersey (where I am from) is a bastion for the "take from the percived rich and give to the poor" so is the entire Eastern seaboard.
One look at the local politics tells me that the voters go with the flow. They are relatively happy in their little hamlets with the Dims running things ... those Dims campaign for the Washington "bread winners" to their districts ... and the voting populace follows suit.
They may not be "educated enough" as far as the future of the country as a whole, but they are educated enough to vote the way Councilman Jones (those that they elect locally) wants, because it's means more school money, better sewers, etc. etc..
It is much like the teachers union. They vote for their jobs, not for the good of education, or the United States.
JMHO
Admittedly, the new media makes it more challenging for them, but TV images still go a long way. And, these people are smart and masters at managing the media.
I shall place you on the Hitlary will win list. ;)
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