"barf.....Barf....BARRRRRRRRRFFFFF!!!!!"
Posted on 11/08/2007 3:57:11 PM PST by governsleastgovernsbest
Who is Amy Sullivan? Is she old enough to know anything about Clinton? And why was she asked to speak on a TV show as an objective journalist when she is a political hack who works for the Dims?
Hillary Clinton on CNN, 02/06/1997
Holy Cow, this broad must have drunk the whole keg of Koolaid!
(no link)
Don’t do it -
She cannot avoid becoming the issue. When that happens, she’ll lose.
Record, The (Hackensack, NJ)
July 17, 2005
Author: By AMY SULLIVAN
FOR A FIRST-TIME candidate and controversial first lady, Hillary Clinton’s bid for the open New York Senate seat in 2000 was going surprisingly well. From the beginning, she had staked out a seemingly impossible strategy, given who she was: ignore the press, go straight to the voters, and focus exclusively on issues, never on herself.
“You make a mistake if you let any campaign become about you,” she told Michael Tomasky, one of the reporters who followed her that year. Given that even campaigns not involving Hillary Clinton sometimes manage to become about Hillary Clinton, it was difficult to imagine how she could pull off this feat.
Still, she stuck doggedly to policy talk, boring the press corps but impressing New York voters. Two weeks before Election Day, she enjoyed a comfortable lead, polling eight points ahead of opponent Rick Lazio.
And that’s when Lazio decided to take matters into his hands and make the race about Clinton whether she liked it or not. His campaign put together a commercial intended to target her biggest vulnerability: white suburban women. All throughout the campaign, this demographic had been the most skeptical in focus groups, even women who liked Clinton said she reminded them of an unpleasant woman in their lives. The ad sought to remind them that, deep down, they didn’t really like Hillary Clinton.
On the screen, a woman making dinner in a kitchen talked on a phone, her tone angry: “We started out at the bottom and worked our tushes off to get somewhere. No, but Hillary, she wants to start at the top, you know, the senator from New York.”
The ad worked. Within days, Clinton’s lead had shrunk to three points, within the margin of error. Although she recovered to win the Senate seat with 55 percent of the vote, Clinton’s advantage among women was only half that of Al Gore’s, who won New York’s female vote by a margin of 65 to 31.
Five years later, Sen. Clinton is a major player on the political scene. Her name is first on the lips of anyone who talks about the 2008 race for the White House. Potential rival John McCain says she would make a fine president. Conservatives such as Newt Gingrich and Bill Kristol are talking up Clinton, warning their partisan colleagues that she would be a formidable opponent.
That’s not surprising - after all, Republicans have long fantasized about the prospect of taking on Hillary Clinton again at a national level. But now, talk of her candidacy has gone from conservative wishful thinking to serious discussions within her own party, which is anxious to end its losing streak and is considering the advantages of closing ranks behind an early frontrunner.
One glance at polls showing that 53 percent of Americans are willing to consider putting Clinton in the White House makes visions of sugar plums and oval offices dance in the heads of Democratic Party leaders. The high name recognition, impressive early poll numbers and a desperate party all carry the Senate whiff of inevitability that accompanied George W. Bush’s campaign for the 2000 election.
In the face of this momentum, someone has to say it, so here goes: Please don’t run, Senator.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m a longtime Hillary Clinton fan. As in a back-when-she-was-still-wearing-headbands fan. I have found her warm and utterly charming in person more than that, she understands the challenges facing Democrats in a way that few others in the party do, and her ability to absorb policy nuances rivals her husband’s. This country is long past due for a female president, and I would love to see Hillary Clinton in that trailblazing role (and not just because it would make Ann Coulter break out in giant hives).
But - at the risk of getting myself permanently blackballed by her loyal and protective staff - while Clinton can win nearly any debate that is about issues, she cannot avoid becoming the issue in a national campaign. And when that happens, she will very likely lose.
It’s not exactly news that Hillary Clinton is a polarizing figure. Ever since Newt Gingrich’s mother whispered to Connie Chung on national television that she thought Mrs. Clinton was, well, a bitch, Americans have understood that the ex-first lady provokes intense emotions on all sides. Still, it’s not hard to see why Hillary boosters are tempted to think that voters might be willing to take a new look at her and why politically astute people are turning cartwheels over the idea of her candidacy.
Over the last five years, Clinton has developed into perhaps the most interesting politician in America. She has a reputation for bipartisanship in the Senate, forming partnerships with some of her most conservative Republican colleagues, including Bill Frist, R-Tenn. She has quietly, but firmly, assumed a leadership role in her own caucus. And she has shown vision and backbone in a party that is accused of having none.
Years before most Washington Democrats started worrying about the party’s reputation on “moral values,” Clinton was bringing Jim Wallis and other progressive religious leaders to talk with her colleagues about reclaiming the concepts of faith and values. She voted for the Iraq war when that wasn’t a popular position for a Democrat to take, and has been willing to speak uncomfortable truths in difficult venues.
In January, she told a crowd of over 1,000 assembled pro-choice activists that the way they have been talking about abortion is wrong, that many Americans won’t even listen to them until they admit that it would be better if most women didn’t have to face the “sad, even tragic choice” of having one. More recently, she cosponsored the “Workplace Religious Freedom Act” after intense lobbying from women’s groups that oppose the legislation.
There’s no one tougher. No one understands better that Middle America cares about both economic issues and cultural concerns. At the same time, no one is better at firing up the liberal base. Add to all of that approval ratings in the high 50s, and it sounds like you have the makings of a sure-fire winner for the Democrats.
And if it were any other candidate, that might be true. But with Hillary Clinton, everything’s more complicated.
(snip)
The only way to reach voters in a nationwide campaign is through the media, both through purchased airtime and what is referred to as “free” media - coverage of campaign events and interviews with print and television reporters. It’s a two-sided coin for candidates. They need journalists in order to get their messages across to the majority of Americans who won’t get a chance to hear them in person, but they have no control over what gets reported or how it’s framed in the press.
Her instincts were correct in 2000: When you’re Hillary Clinton, “free” media always comes with a cost.
Journalists are often no different from voters in general - when they form an impression of a politician, many reporters filter coverage through what they think they know about the candidate. Reporters “knew” Al Gore was a serial exaggerator, that Kerry was an out-of-touch, aristocratic elitist, and that Bush was an amiable goof. They may not let ideological leanings color their coverage, but personal biases can affect what they choose to report and the narratives they choose to tell.
Chemistry is also important for the press corps. Reporters are attracted to straight-talkers like John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, and - in 2003, at least - Howard Dean. Inaccessibility is definitely a turn-off in the early years of the Clinton administration, the First Lady famously fought with The Washington Post over the release of documents about Whitewater. Her chilly relationship with the press has warmed considerably during her first term in the Senate, but Hillary Clinton still has far more skeptics than fans in the press corps.
Sometimes they go far beyond reportorial cynicism. On the Feb. 20, 2005, installment of “The Chris Matthews Show,” a panel discussed Hillary’s candidacy while calling her “Nurse Ratched” and a “castrating female persona” things really got going when journalist Gloria Borger mimicked Clinton’s laugh and mannerisms while her colleagues sniggered.
And that’s coming from members of the mainstream media. The conservative press - never shy when it comes to Hillary Clinton - has spent the spring teeing up for another game of Hillaryball.
It’s too early for anyone to say with certainty that Hillary Clinton can’t win the White House. But it’s far too early - and dangerous - to conclude that she’s the best chance that Democrats have.
* *
Amy Sullivan is an editor of The Washington Monthly. Excerpted from the July-August edition of The Washington Monthly.
tell all the left wingers not to vote for hillary coz she’s a moral conservative, and tell all the conservatives not to vote for hillary coz she’s a fake. Win win.
Of course Hitlery is a moral conservative to the Loony Left b/c all morals are relative to them. As socialist they know that truth does not matter; it’s linguistics that counts.
"barf.....Barf....BARRRRRRRRRFFFFF!!!!!"
Excuse me; I will be back in 15 as soon as I quit ROTFLMAO.
Hillary Clinton is a “moral conservative.” Don’t believe it?
Ask Amy Sullivan. The “Time” editor said so on this evening’s “Tucker.”
Wow.
I didn’t know that Time hired theologians for editors these days.
(snicker)
All of Hillary’s supporters look like that.
Hillary? - the Hillary who had the Christmas tree in the White House her first year there decorated with pornographic artifacts - that Hillary?.......
Queen Evita Jezebel a “moral conservative?!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?”
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
“Miz” Amy Sullivan must be drinking the bong water!
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