Posted on 11/10/2006 2:07:47 AM PST by Mrs Ivan
The total rout of George Bush's Republicans was completed yesterday when the last Senate vote to be counted in America's midterm elections gave victory to the Democrats in Virginia.
The result gave the Democrats an effective 51-49 majority to add to a landslide win in the House of Representatives and presented Bush with the prospect of being a lame-duck President for his final two years in power.
After years of ignoring his political opponents, it was a time for fence-mending yesterday as the President invited Democrat leader Nancy Pelosi to a White House lunch to discuss how they might work together and, crucially, solve the crisis in Iraq.
With the 66-year-old mother-of-five now holding power on Capitol Hill, Mrs Pelosi met a once antagonistic President whom she has variously described as 'dangerous', 'in denial' and 'an emperor with no clothes'.
The humbled President admitted he was 'open to any idea' which might help him end the unpopular war. After the lunch, he congratulated Mrs Pelosi on becoming America's first female House Speaker.
For her part, she said she was looking forward to a series of 'confidence-building' meetings with Bush, adding: 'We are extending the hand of friendship.' But as the Mail reports here, another woman holds the real key to America's future...
An old anti-Clinton joke is doing the rounds again: 'If Clinton were the Titanic, it would have been the iceberg which sank.' Only this time it's being applied to his wife.
As someone who's been on the campaign trial with them both over the years, I've been constantly amazed at the utter unsinkability of the Clintons.
I would often wonder just how many more financial scandals the pair could survive — White-watergate, Futuresgate, Chickengate, Travelgate, Filegate — which always involved her. And sexual scandals, such as the Monica Lewinsky affair, which always involved him.
By the time he relinquished his presidency, Bill had been impeached, and then compounded his sins by granting presidential pardons to assorted criminal cronies.
The day he left office, I wrote: 'It seems almost unbelievable that the greatest political soap opera of the century is over — as its star, Big Bubba Bill, waddles off the political stage, grinning, biting his lip, twinkling his seductive smile, allowing a sentimental tear to fall from his eyes, knowing full well that he's still a winner.
'If the Constitution allowed it, the majority of Americans say they would vote for him again.'
Well, the soap opera ain't over yet. Hillary Clinton has just won a landslide in the mid-term elections and kept her Senate seat. The band played 'You ain't seen nothin' yet!' and Bill was celebrating alongside his fierce, ecstatic, yellow-suited wife.
Everyone knows she'll be running for President in 2008. As Dick Morris, Bill's former campaign adviser and now an implacable foe of the couple, put it: 'The order of succession to the presidency in this poor benighted country may well be Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton.'
She's already jokingly told friends that Bill, who used to refer to himself as 'The Comeback Kid', will be called 'The First Mate'.
The thought of the Clinton duo back in the White House fills many with utter gloom. 'Hillary's smile could curdle embalming fluid.' 'If elephants can do without ankles, why not Hillary?' 'Don't let the Wicked Witch back into the White House!'
SHE always intended to become President — only her gender stood in the way. So she married a good ole Suth'n boy, oozing with charm, whom she met at law school. No one could see what he saw in her. 'Hell, she was ugly — and frankly, looked dirty,' said a fellow law student. 'And not dirty in a sexy way — just dirty!'
A Left-wing feminist, Hillary had greasy, unkempt hair, bottle-lensed glasses and wore charity-shop clothes. But they both recognised in each other a fierce political ambition which would eventually propel them into power.
Bill had grown up with a poor, dysfunctional family, but as an eight-year-old, he told his primary school teacher that if he'd been in charge of the Roman Empire, it would never have fallen. And that he was going to become, first, Governor of Arkansas, and then President.
And Hillary always intended that his presidency would be a joint one: 'Buy one, get one free!'
When her husband first ran for the presidency, she told her close friend Linda Bloodworth-Thomason that the couple's dream was 'Eight years of Bill, eight years of Hill!'
According to Dick Morris, Bill has always been frightened of Hillary and many of his 'scrapes' were compounded by terror of his wife's fury.
Her former business partner, Susan MacDougal, who ended up in jail (and was pardoned by Bill), said: 'Hillary is one of the most focused, most driven, most goal-oriented women I have ever met. I mean, she is a scary woman!'
One of their former advisers told me: 'Bill's always had the character of tapioca, no real ideology, nothing but a general neediness to be loved and huge amounts of charisma. He was always indecisive and undisciplined, but she never was. She's not needy, she's highly ideological, highly liberal, highly focused, and she's always provided the backbone for him.'
I interviewed members of her White House staff who, off the record, spoke of the pair's volcanic rages (and her often foul mouth).
'No one is scared of him, but everyone's scared of her. He has a terrible temper, screams and shouts, and there are bodies all over the floor — but then the sun comes out, and the storm is over.
'She has a much slower fuse, but she's much more dangerous: she's very cold, very scathing, and doesn't forget, so you don't know when she'll get the knives out for you. In that way, she's much more difficult to deal with.'
Ruthlessly unsentimental, it was Hillary who, when reading a speech before delivery, would crisply inform Bill: 'We don't want to throw around words like "love".'
Hillary disliked the mawkishness, the touchy-feely empathising that he's always revelled in.
I was told by Carl Sforazza Anthony, an historian who likes her and admires her unswerving self-belief: 'Her attitude always is, never mind the torpedoes — full steam ahead!'
The woman we saw on television after this week's Senate win bears no resemblance to the 'ugly' woman law student Bill married. She once cared so little about clothes that she forgot to get a wedding dress and her mother had to rush round to a department store to buy one for her.
Hillary is now coiffed, heavily-Botoxed, well-dressed, and looks far younger than she is. But as Camille Paglia, author of Sex, Art And American Culture, points out: 'There is a bleached, sanitised, de-sexed, de-sensualised quality to Hillary's persona.'
There's little doubt that she will win the Democratic nomination for President. She has a massive war chest, a good reputation for hard work in the Senate, and has campaigned for other Democrats in their elections. They now owe her favours. But will she become the first woman President?
She was, at one time, the most hated — and divisive — woman in America. But she's learnt from her mistakes, and in her 'highly focused' way has moved firmly towards the centre; in New York state, she even won in deeply Republican wards.
The woman who began her joint-presidential career despising the military (soldiers who went to the White House complained that she 'treated us like dirt on her shoe') now praises them fulsomely, and she voted for war in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
She stresses her devotion to God (no godless candidate could ever hope to win office in America) and her deep patriotism. And, so far, it seems to be working.
And what of Bill? After all, he once told Dick Morris that he wanted to divorce her. Many times she would have been forgiven for wanting to divorce him. But she never had any intention of letting Bill get away from her: she'd invested too much in his career. And it's said that she still, despite everything, loves him deeply.
Yet they are rarely seen together in public and lead virtually separate lives. Bill's life involves earning huge amounts of money on lecture tours, travelling the world for pet causes and — unfortunately — yet more Good Ole Suth'n boy philandering. She once ruefully said of him: 'It's hard to keep this dog on the porch!'
She knows that he comes with baggage and, once she declares that she's running for President, all the old scandals will be dredged up again (and possibly new ones still to come). Just as she has distanced herself from the Left, so she has also distanced herself from her husband and his chronic misbehaviour.
Only when — and if (it's a big if) — she becomes President will we know whether this is the restoration of the 'Billary' presidency.
'Buy one again, and you get one free... again.'
Hillary is scary, but yesterday it hit me that in January, Pelosi will be 2nd in the line of succession to the Presidency. That's pretty scary too!!!!
Oh, He will. Will must do our part, as well.
"To bad I don't truly believe there are any Republicans in a position of power who plan to help. Then again, after watching their performance the last few years I'm not entirely convinced they were there to help to begin with."
I feel exactly the same way. Even taking into account the MSM, had the GOP acted in ways that we expected them to act, we would not have had Tuesday's slaughter. Conservatives have veen concerned for years with the Republicans inability to defend themselves and put forward conservative points of view. It has been a catastrophic failure and blame has to be placed squarely on GOP leadership, every d--- one of them, Congressional and administrative. And I really do mean EVERYONE in the GOP leadership.
I really believe that Hillary has a good chance to win in 2008, especially with the help of the MSM. They will spend the next two years fighting this administration on every issue.
The real question is what are we going to do about it. Expose Dem corruption and lies on the blogs? Get the Rep politicians off their asses and fight back against the demo propaganda machine? Start looking for a real canditae for POTUS versus the bunch of has beens and losers we have been tossing around for the last two years. We jeered and talked crap for the last two years about how inept the dems were and we see what has happened. We need to stop feeling sorry for ourselves and fight back. Oh yeah, we need to stop all this pansey nice guy "we are better than them" and get down right nasty about this next fight-
"I'M COMIN' FOR YA!"
I don't care in whatever manner she is doing this, Hitlery can SHOVE OFF.
Will someone please point me to the chapter in the Civics textbook that describes how the Committees are organized when the actual count of Senators is tied; 49-D, 49-R, 2-I? Why should the DemoKratz get control if this is the actual split?
"The humbled President admitted he was 'open to any idea' which might help him end the unpopular war. After the lunch, he congratulated Mrs Pelosi on becoming America's first female House Speaker."
After reading this, I felt like I was going to hurl. I wrote this to a friend Wednesday after being reminded of Pelosi's new "role"...I meant it then and mean it now:
Lotsa people I dont like in politics, but she is at the top of my list. How the f*** a vile, loathesome creature like her, was ever even allowed to leave the kitchen, never mind become an elected official, blows my mind. She is a horrible excuse for a human being and deserves to swing from the gallows alongside Saddam.
*That was the edited version.
Whether you agree with her or not, ya gotta admit one thing.
She got bigger stones than the pubbies.
I have said it before, and I'll say it again: Democrats love her, but they love their political money more. And to nominate this woman is to ENSURE that a great big big bonfire of green cash, Democrat political green cash, will be burnt right up.
No, she'll do fine in some primaries, at the most optimistic, but the reality is that someone, likely a big moneyed nameless democrat, is going to put a missle in this chick's wing. The reality is quite plain: all you have to do is watch CSPAN when she really starts to seriously campaign. She sounds horrible, she screeches, and she is utterly hated by so many men ... well....the fact is she is unelectable. Period.
And no amount of feel good liberalism is going to drive the central core of real democrat money into a pyre, just so that on NOv 8, they can get together over cheese and wine and slap eachother on the back about how they nominated the 'right woman'....
"she looks like a fish to me."
that's what she was before she evolved. (she molts too)
My younger sister has said all along that she will vote for Hillary, solely based on the fact that Hillary will be the first woman running for president. I do not underestimate the power of the sentimental vote when it comes to Hillary.
Not to mention, there are people that think the long-suffering Senator deserves to be repaid in kind and sent to the WH.
Then there are those who get a kick out of the Clintons triumphant return to the WH, where the two of them will tag-team the nation.
ALL of these reasons to vote for Hillary seem pitiful to me. How people can blythely just toss away the gravity of an election and vote based on sentimentality makes my blood boil.
Now be fair. Morris is an implacable foe of the couple this month. Dick could easily be back in the Clinton fold, ass-kissing with the best of them, if there's another book deal in it for him.
Does anybody believe she has a chance to get in? Right now I look at the hildebeast as a Republican asset. Her titanic and tyranical ambition is going to wreak havoc in the next dhimmicrat primary cycle. She'll either get the nomination (and lose the election in a landslide) or gut whoever does get the nomination. She is hideous and all the kings horses and all the kings men can't make her look anything but hideous.
The DNC knows better than any of us that winning the NY Senate is one thing, winning the US presidency is quite another. They will fight her. Whoever wins that fight, it's going to be dark days for the dhimmicrats and good times for the rest of us.
The vermin will always be there. It is up to conservatives to keep them in their place. Unfortunately the only party which we can use for a vehicle for our ideas, decided to roll over. There is absolutely no one to blame but the GOP leadership. The press has not changed their stripes for decades.
How come we were able to do to the Dems in '94, what they did to us Tuesday? Leadership.... But then Newt was newtered almost as quickly as he came to power, which was the beginning of the end of that overwhelming statement from a conservative America.
"The press has not changed their stripes for decades".
I dont believe they have changed their stripes, but they have shifted their strategies and have become much more of a powerhouse than they ever used to be.
MM
Notice how there were very few allegations of vote fraud in this election. It's only voter fraud when Republicans win!
Ms. Leslie can toss out all the personal insults she wants. The one inescapable fact is if the Republicans cannot offer a candidate who can articulate the Conservative message better than Mrs. Clinton can articulate the liberal one then the Republican deserves to lose.
Sadly history repeats itself way too often....
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