The Dangers of Hillaryland

One of the many less than honest answers Hillary gave at Wednesday’s debate, was her assertion that she would seek out contrary views from a wide range of sources. The only problem with this rather banal promise is that there is no indication that Hillary has ever approached politics this way. In fact, she is famous for only surrounding herself with loyal staff who rarely question her judgment or decisions.

The idea that Hillary would seek out contrary views and listen to those who disagree with her is laughable given her history. The very term Hillaryland – used to describe her close friends and staff – expresses the idea of a close knit group of people who support and defend Hillary; whose loyalty is clear and unequivocal. In his recent largely favorable bio of Hillary, A Woman In charge, Carl Bernstein describes Hillaryland as “a full-blown culture in which Hillary surrounded herself with people who were loyal to her cause and would do her bidding.”

Bernstein also quotes one time Clinton legal adviser Mark Fabiani on Hillary’s protective bubble:

But the kind of people that were around here were yes people. She had never surrounded herself with people who could stand up to her, who were of a different mind . . . I always thought that was a real tragedy in that if she had had different people around her [who would challenge her] earlier, that maybe some of the things that happened might not have happened.

Hillary the disciplined campaigner knows what platitudes to mouth and what kind of promises to make. But her history fails to match the rhetoric or the professed ideals.

Hillary running on her experience

She just doesn’t want to talk about it . . .

There are some interesting tidbits in The Caucus rundown of Hillary’s recent TV blitz. Clues to the tricky way she is running on her experience without having to debate it. When Tim Russert on Meet the Press went over her history of contradictory statements and positions on Iraq and her vote to authorize force in Iraq she continued to dodge the issue:

“You know, we can talk about 2002 or we can look forward to what is a continuing involvement in a sectarian civil war with no end in sight, and I believe its imperative that we try to create a political consensus to move the president and the Republicans in Congress to extricating us from this civil war,” she told Mr. Russert.

How is it not relevant to discuss her votes and statements on the most important issue of the day? This whole focused on the future line is just a way to quickly move past her rocky history and criticize an unpopular president.

When Chris Wallace raised the Clinton penchant for demonizing their enemies Hillary once again tried to both excuse her past conduct and move on to focus on the future:

Back over on Fox – where, about a year ago, President Clinton tussled notably with his interviewer, Chris Wallace – Mr. Wallace recalled that interview and asked Mrs. Clinton, “why do you and the president have such a hyperpartisan view of politics?”
Mrs. Clinton gave that chuckle of hers again and said, “Oh, Chris, if you had walked even a day in our shoes over the last 15 years, I’m sure you’d understand. But, you know, the real goal for our country right now is to get beyond partisanship.”

Get that? If you only knew what the poor Clinton’s have gone through over the years you would understand why they need to be so ruthless and partisan! A “Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy” was determined to destroy them and so they had to strike back with any means necessary. But the goal now is to “get beyond” partisanship.

This answer both fails to take into account the very nature of her political past and offers a ridiculously naive assertion that she is capable of getting beyond partisanship. Don’t forget Hillary is the one who thrives in the war room and the one who always called for tougher tactics. She is the one who responded to her own mistakes and her husbands serial infidelities with attacks on their political enemies. She is partisanship defined.

The sad thing about all of this is that she just might get away with it. Americans are famously forward looking and often buy into the idea that campaigns should be about the future. But what has to be brought home to the public at large is that Hillary’s past is an important indicator of her future. Those inclined to give her a fresh start will be bitterly disappointed when the past repeats itself.

The Corruption of Clinton’s Campaign

In case you missed it on the front page, Richard Collins has another column on the continuing Hsu affair. As I have noted here, Collins asserts that this latest scandal has to put a dent in the vaunted discipline of the Hillary campaign:

If there is one thing the media agrees upon it is that Hillary Clinton runs a shrewd and disciplined campaign. This mantra runs through practically every media mention as they report the tried and true horse race story lines.

But the ongoing Norman Hsu fundraising scandal has to call into question this basic premise. The New York Times noted this week that Hillary was afraid that a fundraising scandal could harm her campaign. And yet faced with an unknown figure coming out of nowhere to become one of her, and her party’s, biggest fundraisers didn’t raise any red flags.

Read the rest.

Hillary, health care, and the “bad guys”

It is worth remembering as Hillary rolls out her health care proposal: she will demonize the insurance companies and the drug companies and whoever else gets in her way. This is the way she operates. She decides her position and then decides who is the “bad guy” in this scenario and seeks to demonize them every chance she gets.

She will seek to make universal health care coverage an unmitigated good that only evil people oppose. She will not acknowledge the significant costs and the problems of government run health care but simply paint a picture of bad people stopping good work from being done.

She will not admit to any fault in the failure to pass so called health care reform last time around either. Again, it will be powerful interests who are opposing her efforts to help every American.

McCain on Hillary, Petraeus, and MoveOn

It seems Rudy isn’t the only one who wants to criticize Hillary Clinton about her unique turn of phrase the other day:

Hillary Quote for the Day

Sen. Hillary Milhous Clinton has been lumbering around the political landscape talking about herself as commander in chief. She joined the Senate Armed Services Committee as a freshman seven short years ago and has managed to pick up enough military jargon to sound like an Army major on his third tour of duty in the Pentagon’s administrative office. She has taken on the world-weary sound of a veteran European diplomat — although she has not carried out even one day’s duty as a diplomat.

In fact, prior to being elected to the Senate in 2000, her only recent professional employment had been as a lawyer in Little Rock, Arkansas while her husband, coincidentally, was governor of that state. She represented clients who sometimes had an interest in getting to know her husband better.

She has never managed anything larger than a Senate office, although she did exercise the traditional first lady’s prerogative of trying to get various of her husband’s staff fired.

Her international activities while first lady were more in line with the ceremonial responsibilities of a Pat Nixon or Laura Bush, than with the actual interventions of Eleanor Roosevelt — who she does claim to have spoken to via seance.

- Tony Blankley, Washington Times