Hillary: "It's Time"

Madame Clinton Rodham thinks the U.S. is ready for woman as President:

"It's about time, if not past time, we had a woman president," she told an enthusiastic and overflow crowd of 1,500 Iowa Democrats jammed into a high school gymnasium in Des Moines.

I heartily agree.

Just not that particular woman. Ever.

Posted by: Gary at 03:23 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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HillaryCare Back On The Agenda

Oh, boy. Here we go. Her Shrillness has thrown down the gauntlet once again:

"Health care is coming back," Clinton warned, adding, "It may be a bad dream for some."

In the first two years of Bubba's term, Hillary's heavy-handed Health Care Reform turned into one of the biggest political disasters in history and it's clear that she hasn't learned a thing. Even with both the Legislative and Executive branches in Dem hands she couldn't get this one off the drawing board in 1994. And we all know what happened to Congress after that fiasco.

What was it that Santayana said about history?

A "bad dream for some"? It's going to be a nightmare for any Democrat who thinks the voters will fall for this one the second time around.

Posted by: Gary at 01:53 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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47% "Definitely Would Not Vote" For Hillary

A new CNN poll shows 47% are guaranteed "no" votes for Hillary Clinton. The same percentage registered "no" for John Kerry and 48% said "no" for Al Gore. The poll of 1,001 adult Americans was conducted June 1-6 by Harris Interactive and has a sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Now being CNN, I'm inclined to believe that they low-balled that figure. Imagine if the real number is 50% or higher? Now that would be news. Of course you also need to qualify the sampling since "adult Americans" does not necessarily mean "registered voters", much less "likely voters". In any case, the fact that Hillary has such high negatives only makes her position even more precarious. Her balancing act between appeasing the moonbats in the primaries and appealing to non-moonbats in the general election will be like threading a needle.

But, hey, it's a still a long way to go to November 2008. Without the results of this year's elections to complete the picture, 2008 is still a wide open race.

Related: Hillary Scares Voters!

Posted by: Gary at 11:09 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.

A new poll reveals that Hillary scares voters:

"A new poll found the prospect of a President Hillary Clinton scares more Americans than any other likely 2008 candidate.

When a Fox News/Opinion Dynamics Poll asked which of four potential candidates for President "frightens you the most," 36% said the New York senator."

And before you say "oh, sure, FoxNews. no wonder.", the same poll had Rudy Guiliani coming in next at 17%.

But 36%? Egads, that's one out of every three!

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Who's The Boss?

Bill Clinton has been told in no uncertain terms that - as far as his wife's political future is concerned - Hillary is calling the shots.

The former President agreed to give his wife a veto to avoid his habit of making controversial headlines that could hurt her chances of returning to the White House, multiple sources told the Daily News.

"He knows it's Hillary's time now," said an adviser close to both Clintons who expects to play a key role in her likely 2008 presidential campaign.

Hillary Clinton's handlers are keeping a close rein on the former President's schedule to try to prevent another embarrassing screwup like their competing roles in the Dubai ports deal.

Now as far as issues like his lobbying for the Dubai ports deal, this is understandable because they need to at least appear as if they're on the same page. But it begs the question - will Bill have any say in how she runs her anticipated 2008 Presidential campaign? Certainly he has a stake in it.

The former President's political instincts are his greatest strength. Hillary doesn't have her husband's personal magnetism and charm. But you would think she would want the benefit of Bill's advice handy as a reality check. Will she embrace it or disregard it? And how much does she really trust him at this point in their relationship? Running for President is challenging enough without having the feeling that you're the smartest person in the room.

I have no doubt that the NY Senator acted very much the "co-President" while she was in the White House. But it must have been difficult for her to ultimately accept only a supporting role for eight long years. It doesn't suit her. This is now her chance to be the boss but if she's not careful she might end up relying solely on her own political instincts (or lack thereof) which would make the next two and a half years more fun for the GOP.

Posted by: Gary at 09:24 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Quote Of The Day

"The real trouble is that Hillary is a star politician without a star personality."

- Myrna Blyth, "Anger Management" published in NRO.

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Hillary: The Anti-Bill

Dick Morris must love poking sticks at his former client, Hillary Clinton. And he's one of the few people that knows her so well and isn't afraid to cross her. It must drive her insane. His column today talks about the NY Senator's lack of, shall we say, "range":

Bill Clinton — the man whom Bush recently described as his “brother” — is capable of a wide range of rhetorical styles and does not need harshness to convey passion. A raise of his eyebrow often suffices. A nod of his head. A properly constructed glance. But the woman who, by deduction, is apparently the president’s sister-in-law is not as capable. Indeed, she has two rhetorical styles: coy and strident. Off and on. Soft and loud.

And lately she has been running as though it is 2008 already, hitting Bush every day over everything. But the pace is wearing off the artificial veneer of civility she had managed to paint over her partisan fangs and leaving her image back in the dog days of Healthcare Hillary. Too soon, she is unveiling her true personality. She is getting overexposed.

Of course, sheÂ’s got a tough problem. To accept a lower profile in a time of war and political heat would be to let others pass her by. She has mousetrapped herself into backing the war policy her party detests and must be visibly out there on all other issues to compensate.

But the more she raises the political pressure, the more she grates on America like nails on a blackboard. And we have three more years of this to look forward to.

She's been grating on me for that last fourteen years. But I'm going to enjoy the next three.

Posted by: Gary at 02:01 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The Souring Of Hillary

Isn't if odd that 2008 is still two years away and the supposed "anointed one", Hillary Clinton, is already running into troubles with her Democrat base. Jonah Goldberg writes in the LA Times today about the reasons that many of her biggest supporters are getting fed up with her.

At every turn, Hillary Clinton's Zelig-like public persona has been a fabrication — either by her fans, her enemies or herself. One telling episode came when she published her massively successful autobiography, "Living History." The book tour was nothing short of a coronation, confirming her gravitas and commitment to "the issues." She portrayed herself as resigned to the fact that she'd have to answer Barbara Walters' questions about her personal life, but she always made it seem like she'd rather wrestle with the hard issues of public policy. But when the Washington Post actually tried to ask her about something other than how she cried over her husband's sexcapades with an intern, the senator from New York "declined to be interviewed about the political content of her book."

Hillary Clinton's latest reinvention paints her as a moderate, even an Iraq war hawk. Few people buy it. Reporters regularly assume her motives are opportunistic rather than sincere, focusing on how every pronouncement will position her for the 2008 presidential race. National Public Radio's Mara Liasson, for example, recently observed, "She certainly sees it in her interest to get to the right of the president on many issues, especially in the area of national security."

HRC's biggest problem is that she has never - ever - come across as being comfortable in her own skin. Both her supporters and her detractors just don't know who she is. One wonders if she even does.

Her husband had a list of flaws as long as his resume, but one thing you can say about Bill Clinton is that he was, and still is, a master politician. America has never seen anything like him before and perhaps never will again. It truly is a gift for someone to be able to so connect with people - even people who don't like him - and distract them from the fact that his principles are defined by poll numbers and political expediency.

Hillary is woefully deficient in this skill and people understand this. It's not something you learn, it's something you're born with. Hillary did not win a Senate seat in New York on her charm or command of the issues. She won because a lot of people felt sorry for her that she had to tolerate her husband's philandering and felt she needed an opportunity to strike out on her own. In 2008, nobody is going to elect someone who plays the victim. With such important issues of National Security on the line, voters will want someone who will make our enemies the victims.

They will also want someone who is decisive. When Presidential candidates can't figure out who they are or what they believe in and constantly try to "reinvent" themselves, the electorate rejects them. It didn't work for Al Gore and it didn't work for John Kerry. It certainly won't work for Hillary, whose naked ambition isn't even fooling her biggest cheerleaders, the MSM.

And yet, for all this take of frustration and dissatisfaction over her among Democrats, she's still the one to beat for the nomination. And Hillary isn't going to be deterred. Like Glenn Close's character in "Fatal Attraction", she's determined and she's not going to just go away - "I won't be ignored, Dan!" How this continues to play out over the next twenty-four months is going to be one of the most fascinating political stories we've seen for a long time. Maybe ever.

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Congress: Life On The "Plantation"

In the wake of Hillary's incendiary comparison of the Lower Legislative body to an ante-bellum "plantation", Ace has done his homework and come up with his "Top 10 Ways The House Of Representatives Is Like A "Plantation".

"...and you know what I'm talkin' about." - HRC

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Quote Of The Day

Kurt Anderson (a Bush-hating NY Liberal, BTW) writing in New York magazine about Hillary's political kabuki dance:

Lacking her husband’s uncanny knack for finessing left and right, however—the famous triangulation strategy—she plays the game awkwardly, like a very earnest Vulcan who has closely studied Earth politics.

I just thought that was perfect.

Posted by: Gary at 03:28 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Hillary's Precarious Position

It seems in all this brouhaha over Iraq and the Dems' call for troop withdrawal, Sen. Clinton is trying to have it both ways. In an email to her supporters, she defends her vote back in 2002 but on the other hand she still pushes the "Bush Lied" meme. On the one hand, she says the U.S. needs to "finish what it started", but on the other hand she says the Administration is making a mess of it. Rather than take a firm stand one way or the other she's purposely muddying the waters.

John Hinderaker at Powerline weighes in:

No doubt Clinton's approach, which recalls her husband's policy of triangulation, will be hailed as another shrewd move by the mistress of calculation. But I wonder. There is a certain sourness in the position Clinton has staked out: the war was a mistake which I voted to authorize only because I didn't know the facts; ever since, it has been bungled horribly; nevertheless, we have no choice but to see the mistake through to the bitter end. It smacks, somehow, of the purse-lipped, take-your-medicine feminist First Lady of the early days of Bill Clinton's presidency.

It strikes me that Hillary's cod-liver-oil approach to Iraq could well lose to a more emotionally satisfying, back to the '60s antiwar campaign in the Democratic primaries, or, in the general election, to a proponent of President Bush's idealistic vision of the Iraq war as a key element in the nation's long-term strategy for defeating Islamic terrorism.

As if to confirm Hinderaker's analysis, Jimmy Breslin of Newsday - an outspoken and often annoying Liberal columnist - today slams Hillary over another email he got from her asking for money and not even mentioning Iraq as an issue:

"Hillary Clinton today holds the new North American record for fakery.

She copies. She sneaks and slithers past you with her opinion on a war that kills every day...

...We now have Hillary Clinton blowing on her fingers as she goes about cracking the combination to another safe. If the one hand glistens, it is from the wedding ring that she has used to hypnotize the public so far. Beautiful."

Hillary has a real problem looming before her. If she wants to shore up her base for 2008, she needs to satisfy the moonbat activists who vote in the primaries. But on the other hand if she is going to stave off a challenge from a more "moderate" Democrat like former VA Governor Mark Warner and go on to win a general election, she has to try to convince voters she can be a credible Commander-In-Chief fighting the GWOT.

Unfortunately for Hillary, her party is making Iraq THE issue of 2006. How is she going to emerge from this battle without doing serious political damage to her 2008 run for the Presidency? She can't go on forever saying "talk to the hand".

UPDATE: 10:15am
Ouch. Drudge is reporting that on Air America radio this morning actor Tim Robbins - no doubt a big donor to HillPAC - was quoted as saying "Hillary Clinton can kiss my butt!"

Posted by: Gary at 09:15 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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True Colors

Hillary choses:

"I believe I must vote against [Roberts'] confirmation. I do not believe that the Judge has presented his views with enough clarity and specificity for me to in good conscience cast a vote on his behalf."

So there's not really an issue with his qualifications. It's just that he didn't pass the Chuckie Schumer test - spell out plainly how you would rule on any number of cases that may come before you.

So reads her official statement. Well neither did Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 1993, and rightly so. Such testimony would encourage one side or another to bring cases before SCOTUS with the idea that he or she has already "pre-judged" the case.

Hillary is trying really, really hard to present a "moderate" face to potential voters for her Presidential run in 2008. But if she doesn't mollify her base the hard-Left moonbats, she won't be a Senator in 2007.

Watch many a Dem Senator pull this same stunt - with the same rationale - next week, when Roberts' nomination goes before the full Senate. If he's confirmed with 65 total votes, it would be a miracle.

And once again, Democrats will show the average voter that it doesn't matter who Bush nominates - no matter how qualified - he or she will be "unacceptable" to the moonbat Left, who is in the driver's seat for the Dems.

Posted by: Gary at 10:31 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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