Posted on 10/24/2007 6:59:08 AM PDT by Kaslin
The most interesting thing to come out of the umpteenth Republican debate Sunday is confirmation that the GOP is dying to run against Hillary Clinton. Like Don Rickles flaying a heckler, each candidate whacked at Clinton as if she were a pants-suited piñata. When they were done with their one-liners, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee deadpanned: "Look, I like to be funny. There's nothing funny about Hillary Clinton being president."
No, but there's something deeply advantageous to having her as an opponent. So far, the commentary about the Republican offensive against Hillary has focused mostly on how it reflects poorly on the GOP (those Clinton-hating wing nuts are at it again!). What's not been fully grasped is how Hillary gives the GOP its best chance at being the party of change.
Newt Gingrich, for one, has been pointing this out for months, using the May electoral triumph of Nicolas Sarkozy in France as an example. A cabinet minister for the unpopular Jacques Chirac, who'd served as president for a biblically long term of 12 years, Sarkozy ran against his own incumbent party's complaisance as well as his Socialist opponent, Segolene Royal, arguing that she represented a return to a failed past and more of the same.
America isn't France - obviously - but Democrats may be misreading America nonetheless. It seems incandescently clear that voters want a change, and up to now, change meant little more than Democratic victory and no more President Bush. But Democrats got a significant victory in 2006, when they took control of both houses of Congress. And now Congress is even less popular than Bush. In other words, the clamor for change in Washington is much bigger than Bush.
Besides, Bush is leaving no matter what. And unlike every other election since the 1920s, there's no White House-approved candidate in the race. Any Republican will start with 40 percent to 45 percent of the vote in his pocket once he gets the nomination. The question is whether the critical 5 percent to 10 percent of swing voters will think Hillary Clinton represents the sort of change they want.
To wit: Most independents and swing voters want an end to the acrimony and bitterness in Washington - and a candidate they like. Whether that's right or not is irrelevant. That's what they want.
Which Democratic candidate would be most likely to give those voters what they want? Not Hillary, it's safe to say.
Right now, she can get away with boasting about her tenure in the Clinton administration. Party activists are drunk with Clinton nostalgia. On the stump in Iowa, Bill Clinton responded to the claim that Hillary was "yesterday's news" by saying, yeah, but "yesterday's news was pretty good."
In the general election, audiences will remember Whitewater, Travelgate, illegal fundraising, bimbo eruptions and impeachment. If they don't, you can be sure Republicans will remind them. Fair or not, the Republicans' intense dislike of Hillary will underscore the idea that a vote for her is a vote for more of the same rancor.
Hence the irony of the Clinton candidacy. Liberal activists keep saying that they want a candidate who is pure, speaks from the heart and refuses to "triangulate" on core principles the way Bill Clinton did. But Hillary Clinton is Clintonian in more than just name. On national security in particular, she has been alternating between reflexive anti-Bushism to bouts of outright hawkishness. Desperate to win, Democrats have been willing to overlook that - so far. But such shifting costs her credibility and passion.
It's all deeply reminiscent of how John Kerry wound up as the nominee in 2004. Once Howard Dean, the conviction candidate, experienced the political equivalent of spontaneous human combustion, Democrats immediately cast about not for another principled politician but one they deemed electable. Bizarrely, they settled on the left-wing senator from Massachusetts who synthesized Ted Kennedy's politics with Michael Dukakis' charisma while bragging about his service in a war he built a career denouncing.
If Democrats could get out of their bubble, it might dawn on them that virtually all of their other candidates are better positioned to run as champions of change. Hillary Clinton has shrewdly tried to trim the differences between her and the competition by claiming that any of them would be better than George W. Bush. From a liberal perspective, that's obviously true. But that perspective won't necessarily dominate come next fall, particularly if conditions in Iraq continue to improve.
Is it really so obvious that, say, Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney represent "change" less than the ultimate Clinton retread, complete with Bill as "first gentleman"? That's how Democrats are betting right now, and they may be bitterly disappointed - again - when it comes time to collect.
I would not call it a dream. More like a nightmare.
Underestimate her in the upcoming election and she could well turn into our nightmare.
A nice, hopeful message...but who’s paying attention?
Not the normal American citizen. Hillary’s chances look too good for me to be comfortable.
The bottom line is that Hillary is the best candidate for us to run against despite her ability to raise lots of money [from questionable sources], high name recognition, and a very capabable, experienced pollitical organization that will be pulling out all stops.
I don't think we have been underestimating Hillary, just the opposite. The fact that Hillary has been receiving powder puff treatment form her Dem opponents and the MSM has created the false impression that she is unassailable. We all know differently and once the Reps select a nominee, Hillary will be attacked as never before. She is vulnerable, make no mistake about it.
Now there's an image for you.
(Of course this assumes that all Democrats haven't gone crazy) It wouldn’t surprise me if Hillary draws the lightening for a while and then at the 11th hour someone else steps in. The sudden loss of the big negatives would give the candidate considerable buoyancy. This would require some serious hard ball because Hillary WANTS the job.....but with the Clintons as the Demo’s last SUCCESSFUL example.....
Everyone of our candidates for POTUS has one leg of the stool missing. Hillary will bring out the broken glass Republicans-even if it's Rudy.
So, they all intend to campaign on the slogan “At Least I’m Not Her!”
With all due respect I was around here for the 2006 election posts and I remember all the rosy predictions about the seats we were supposed to pick up and how nobody in their right mind could believe that the country would hand power back to the Democrats. Didn't quite work out that way. Two years before that the Democrats were saying that anyone they nominated could beat George Bush given his job performance and his win in 2000. That didn't turn out quite like they had predicted, either.
Maybe everything you're saying is true. I don't know, but the stakes are too high to assume that the country wouldn't be crazy enough to elect Hillary Clinton. She is going to be their candidate, and she is not the GOP's dream opponent. She is a smart, crafty woman who knows what she's doing. I would rather assume that she could well win and run as if we were 5 points behind. Take nothing for granted. Forget her negatives and worry instead about what people percieve as her positives. Concentrate on running the best possible campaign against her. Do that and we win. Underestimate her and we lose. It's that simple.
Good article but the author like many pundits and some conservatives (quiet few on FR) still do not see the most fatal problem with Hillary Clinton and that is the woman is simply NOT LIKEABLE. Therefore she has a fatal flaw in the most important trait to be elected President: LIKEABILITY. Neither the so called Clinton Machine nor the liberal media, nor Hillary Clinton nor her husband can do anything to change this fatal problem.
Precisely. No one wants to live with a schrew for four years. Her voice alone will cause millions of people to go insane.
OK. Everything he says about hillary’s unlikeability is true.
But what he doesn’t consider is, what are the alternatives?
The other candidates are all fruitcakes and lightweights. Probably Osama Obama is the most likeable of the bunch, but the closer you look at him, the less likeable he becomes. He is half rich-hippie-lovechild, and half Afro-Indonesian Muslim. He has virtually no experience, he raced through Harvard on affirmative action grants, he has corrupt relationships with Chicago real estate guys, and every time he opens his mouth on foreign policy he puts his foot in it.
How about the other candidates? Even worse. So where does that leave them? With hillary, as the most credible of the bunch—which isn’t saying much, of course.
Their only hope is that the Republicans will shoot themselves in the foot and produce an even weaker candidate, and maybe pass an illegal amnesty and the Lost Treaty, and maybe send a few more congresscritters reeling out of the closet. All that is far from a vain hope, because the Republicans have certainly shown themselves very good at doing that, most recently in the last election.
In any case, hillary it will be. The rank and file Dem politicians hate her as an outsider who moved in and took over their party. But what can they do? She has the goods on them.
Looks like that’s the plan, except they are all too damn close to being her, to bother to vote for any of them.
Agree 100%.
Too LATE!!!
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