Posted on 12/07/2005 11:50:03 AM PST by new yorker 77
Worried that the left-wing Democratic Peace Train may be leaving the station without her, Hillary Clinton is scrambling for a seat by moving away from her carefully crafted hawkish support of the Iraq war. But she can’t join the left body and soul because she still needs to show how tough she is on national security issues, so she is trying to craft her own “third way” on Iraq.
All she has succeeded in doing, however, is fudging her position, muddying it up, but convincing nobody on the right or on the left.
Hillary became a hawk in the first place because she realizes that the chief obstacle to a female presidency is the concern by both sexes that a man might be better at handling issues such as national defense and security. To have a realistic chance at winning the White House, the Hillary Clinton of It Takes a Village and healthcare reform must take a back seat to Hillary the Hawk, an American incarnation of the likes of Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir and Indira Ghandi.
As if to underscore the point, her friends and aides have worked with the Hillary supporters at ABC to craft the weekly show “Commander in Chief,” portraying a Hillary-like female president coping successfully with national-security issues.
But her long-term strategy of positioning herself as a hawk is increasingly running afoul of the gathering momentum on the left opposing the war in Iraq. She now faces a Senate primary fight next year from a hard-left liberal in New York state, and it is not difficult to envision a revitalized Al Gore or John Kerry challenging her from the left in 2008.
As happened in the 1960s, a new left is emerging around opposition to a war, leaving behind old-style liberals who support the invasion and grinding them underfoot. Hillary could be marginalized in 2008 just as Hubert Humphrey was in 1968 and she is determined to prevent it.
So Hillary has to figure out how to have her cake and eat it too — how to appease the gathering fury on the left while reinforcing her image as tough on national security.
What makes this task more difficult still is Hillary’s tendency to become a true believer once a guru has shown her the way. Just as she bought the Fabian Socialist vision of Ira Magaziner — hook, line and sinker — on healthcare reform, she may be falling under the influence of men in uniforms as they address her on the dais of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Hillary, after all, is not quite the opportunist Bill is. He shifts with the wind. Hillary often hunkers down hard on a position and requires a hurricane to dislodge her.
But her political antennae — and Bill’s — have led her to begin to move to the left, embracing a muddled middle ground. She says she “takes responsibility” for her vote for the war but insists that she was misled by bad intelligence and indicates that Congress, and presumably she herself, would not have authorized the war if it had known then what it knows now.
But even so, she says we must neither withdraw nor set a timetable for doing so, since such a policy would invite the terrorists to wait us out and return to power as we leave. However, she qualifies her position by saying that we should say we will eventually leave and articulate the milestones that would have to be achieved to permit us to do so.
This position is a political pretzel worthy of her husband’s squirming over tough issues.
But it won’t fool anyone. The right knows that she is, at best, an unreliable ally and, at worst, an insincere one. The left will not accept anything less than full-out opposition to the war. And our troops in the field — and their families back home — likely will not find much comfort in learning that Sen. Clinton wants them to risk their lives for a mistake.
And George Bush is not going to solve Hillary’s problem for her by winding up the war anytime soon. No matter what public opinion says, he is determined to stay in Iraq until the democratically elected government can handle the terrorists on its own. As commander in chief (the real one, not Geena Davis), he can do as he pleases. Congress is not about to cut off funding now or in the future, and Bush can stay in Iraq until the end of his term if need be.
So what is Hillary to do?
Morris, a former political adviser to Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and President Bill Clinton, is the author of Condi vs. Hillary: The Next Great Presidential Race.
Hillary can't go both ways?
Anybody told her yet?
Oh yes she can. She can be arrogant and a person of the little people at the same time. She can also be permanently pissed annoyed and angry and at the same time for the children........... etc., etc.
They don't really care about the war or the boys, it's just a vehicle to attack the right and hillary '08 will fit the bill nicely.
You suck, Hillary.
You have had your last promotion.
Incorrect.
Further, the Legacy Media will shield her at every step.
Don't tell Ellen Degenerate.
Go back to Park Ridge, Illinois and try to find Don Jones.
*****
From "Hillary's Choice":
Another important older man entered Hillary's life that same year (1961), when she was hovering between thirteen and fourteen on the cusp of adolescence. He was a tall, blond, blue-eyed man who wore a crew cut and white bucks and tooled around town in a bright red Impala convertible. He was young and all the girls thought he was good looking. But Don Jones was also a true intellectual- Hillary's type. Twenty-six and fresh from divinity school at Drew University across the Hudson River from New York City, he succeeded three youth ministers who had been safe and traditional. Jones represented a radical change for the sleepy First Methodist Church of Park Ridge.
"New ideas were frowned upon in our community," says Patsy Henderson Bowles. "We hadn't been exposed to diversity. Don wanted us to think about where other people were coming from and to understand their problems."
Jones was the only alternative reality in town. On Sunday evenings in September of 1961, he would offer Hillary's church youth his version of the "University of Life" program. He had been outside the sterile world of suburbia and could offer a window onto the more exotic worlds of abstract art. Beat poetry, existentialism, and the rumblings of radical political thought and counterculture politics that were eventually to explode under the smug slumber of even the good gray burghers of Park Ridge."
Mr. Morris wants me to believe that Hillary is moving towards the "left" and into the "middle"? So she was on the "right"?
That's absurd. DM doesn't know what he is talking about.
Hillary is nothing but the most cynical of opportunists.
This is great, a third party will take votes from the witch and she will get trounced in 08.
Of couse she can, how do you think Chelsea got here?......
Old media protects and promotes her each and every day.
****
The old established/liberal/socialist media is America's most ruthless, relentless, and destructive enemy.
***
Remember the loud chorus of boos directed toward Hillary that was removed by Viacom from the tape of the N.Y. 9/11 Concert???
"She says she “takes responsibility” for her vote for the war but insists that she was misled by bad intelligence and indicates that Congress, and presumably she herself, would not have authorized the war if it had known then what it knows now."
No one wants such a person that could so easily claim to be misled to be their LEADER!!
Her statments show she has no "gut" instincts.
Always trust your gut. The reports due to be unclassified from Douha, Quatar will further "connect the dots".
Hehehehe.
She does go both ways. Just ask Webb Hubbel and Donna Shalayla.
and Janet el Reno
According to Hitlery or everyone else?
I watched some of Commander in Chief once and it stunk.
Hillary can't go both ways....
no ac/dc for Hillary. this is gonna make her real mad.
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