March 6, 2005
BET RUDY DUCKS HER:
As Clinton Wins G.O.P. Friends, Her Challengers' Task Toughens: Senator Hillary Rodham has managed to cultivate a bipartisan image that has made her a surprisingly welcome figure in some New York Republican circles. (RAYMOND HERNANDEZ, 3/06/05, NY Times)
With her 2006 re-election campaign approaching, New York Republican leaders vow to rally party loyalists in a broad effort to topple Mrs. Clinton, who has long engendered deep antipathy on the right.But as the fund-raiser last year in the heavily Republican town of Corning illustrated, the party may have a bit of a problem on its hands.
In the four years since taking office, Mrs. Clinton has managed to cultivate a bipartisan, above-the-fray image that has made her a surprisingly welcome figure in some New York Republican circles, even as she remains exceedingly popular with her liberal base.
A recent poll by The New York Times, for example, showed that Mrs. Clinton's popularity had sharply improved among Republicans voters surveyed, with 49 percent saying they approved of the job she was doing, compared with 37 percent who expressed similar sentiments in October 2002.
But perhaps nothing demonstrates her improved standing with the opposition as much as the close ties she has forged with many leading Republican officials in the state, who say that they have been pleasantly surprised by what they describe as the nuts-and-bolts pragmatism of her style.
Funny how she and Liddy Dole, who folks accused of skating on their husbands' reputations, have turned into two of the most effective members of the Senate.
Posted by Orrin Judd at March 6, 2005 12:54 PM
Yeah. It makes you wonder, doesn't it.
Posted by: JAB at March 6, 2005 1:08 PMIt says far more about the Senate than it does about Clinton or Dole.
Posted by: Bart at March 6, 2005 2:22 PMThey've both worked hard and been smart.
Posted by: oj at March 6, 2005 2:25 PMIt's easy to look like a Derby winner when you run against $5000 claimers. Gerry Cooney's competition, before he met Holmes, was tougher than that faced by either Dole or Clinton. I sincerely doubt that the Senate has been more mediocre than it is now at any time in our history. It's worse than the House of Lords.
Posted by: Bart at March 6, 2005 3:09 PMThe problem is that Senators (or people with Senatorial a mindset) make bad Presidential candidates. Just ask Kerry, Dole, Gore, Mondale, or for that matter, Dan Quayle and McCain and all the other host of wannabes from the past two decades.
What would be interesting is if Hillary would swap places with Pataki. She could still pull it off and run in '008 by making her presidential run one to save the party and the country from disaster. (Hadn't Nixon only been in the Senate two years when Eisenhower picked him?) Or plan on getting reelected as Gov. and running in '012 in the hopes of repeating her husband's success in defeating a lousy successor.
Posted by: Raoul Ortega at March 6, 2005 4:54 PMClinton's task has been made ridiculously easy by the behavior of the rest of her party.
Posted by: MG at March 6, 2005 5:07 PMThe US Senate under Reagan was far better than the current edition. People like Jackson, Moynihan, Nunn, Inouye(in his prime). The GOP had people like Phil Gramm, Pete Wilson, Paul Laxalt, even Howard Baker.
Posted by: Bart at March 6, 2005 5:56 PMLe'see here— Gramm, Jackson and Baker made presidential runs that went nowhere almost as fast as John Connelly's. Pete Wilson was instrumental in the disappearance of the GOP in California during his eight years as gov. Moynihan, Nunn and Inouye never strayed from voting the party line when it counted, yet somehow the first two got a reputation as being "principled."
Bart:
Ha! Hack Central. As Raoul points out, the only one who ever voted his stated principles was Gramm.
Posted by: oj at March 7, 2005 8:49 AM