March 11, 2005
THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY...:
What’s Hillary Up To?: The former first lady is frustrating the right by proving different from the caricature they made of her (Eleanor Clift, March 11, 2005, Newsweek)
Hillary Clinton is keeping unusual company these days. She was in Iraq with John McCain. She cosponsors legislation with South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who was one of the House managers pressing for her husband’s impeachment. And this week, she stood shoulder to shoulder with two of the Senate’s most right-wing members, Rick Santorum and Sam Brownback, to introduce a bill to examine the impact of the dreaded evil media on children, the kind of legislation that normally sends shivers down every liberal spine. [...]The question for any woman seeking the presidency in the post-9/11 era is whether she can be a credible commander in chief. Rice has the resume, but can she stare down the North Koreans and the mullahs in Iran? Clinton gets rave reviews from Republicans for her work on the Senate Armed Services Committee. She is confounding them on a daily basis by defying the caricature they created. The lamp-throwing, cursing, calculating Lady Macbeth is gone, if she ever really existed.
What a strange essay. Ms Clift reports the various ways in which Republicans are impressed by Ms Clinton and how willing they are to work with her but then alleges that they are frustrated and confounded by her. Which is right, her reporting or her opinions?
Posted by Orrin Judd at March 11, 2005 6:48 PM
-- The former first lady is frustrating the right by proving different from the caricature they made of her --
Uhhh, Ms. Clift - Evita caricatured herself, "the right" didn't.
And since one of the charges against Bill and Hillary has been that they disguise their true beliefs with moderate-sounding words, she's actually just reinforcing that opinion.
Posted by: PapayaSF at March 11, 2005 9:15 PMElanor seems to think the right is rendering garments in torment about Hillary's strategy, when in fact anyone with an ounce of sense could see three years ago this is what she was going to do to prepare herself for a 2008 run.
There are still several issues -- abortion, health care, judicial nominees -- where Mrs. Clinton can be pressed in roll call votes, to see if her recent move to the center and statements at odds with Democratic orthodoxy are mere Dick Morris-style triangulation. So for now most of the right are looking on more in bemusement with out the left is going to handle the Clintons' actions than any sort of major panic within their own ranks. Now if the Republicans in the Senate and in the White House give Hillary a free pass on the major wedge issues of the day through 2007, then you may see some angst on the right.
Posted by: John at March 11, 2005 11:46 PMPapayaSF and John have got it precisely correct. I think her positions are all fake, but it's important that Republicans make her prove it one way or the other.
Posted by: h-man at March 12, 2005 4:44 AMJohn is right that she should be forced to be on the record through votes whenever possible. If she votes in a centrist manner, she will be assailed in the primary. The DLC appears to have committed suicide as their paymasters in the Southern business community now must look to the GOP even on the Aldermanic level. So, the entire gravity of Democratic money will be on the Far Left. If she votes the party line, she will be attacked in the general as a Leftie regardless of what she may say. Also, statements with a pinkish tone that she made before her Senate race can come back to bite her on her copious, black pantsuited derriere.
If the WOT is still ongoing, how does she run? She cannot say that she will be tough on the terrorists like her husband, because pretty much everyone not on the MoveOn payroll agrees that Clinton was asleep on his watch when it came to terror. If McCain or Giuliani or Rice gets to the general election and the WOT is ongoing, they will scrape the Hildebeest off like a bug on the windshield. If she tries to appear too tough, the MoveOn bunch and the professional appeasers of the MSM and academia will fricasse' her in the primaries. If she pulls a Patty Murray, far closer in my estimation to her true 'character', any non-Nazi with the GOP line(ahem, anyone not a paleo-con)would beat her in a 50 state sweep, even Gary Bauer or Allan Keys.
Posted by: Bart at March 12, 2005 11:14 AM