Giving Hillary credit
Bookworm on Feb 13 2007 at 8:57 am | Filed under: Hillary Clinton
I don’t like Hillary because I don’t like Hillary’s bone deep, far left conviction that government is the answer. However, I have to give Hillary credit for something. Despite all her desperate squirming around to placate the anti-War crowd, she has continued to support a military presence in Iraq:
As Congress sifts its way through the various resolutions on the war in Iraq, Senator Hillary Clinton will find herself on the spot, torn between preserving her mainstream viability by supporting the troops in the field and maintaining her front runner status in the Democratic Party by courting the antiwar Left. She will be asked to vote on Senator Barack Obama’s bill to set a timetable of troop withdrawal culminating in a total pullout by March 2008, and on bills to cut off funding for Bush’s “surge” of 20,000 extra troops.
To date, Hillary has rejected setting a timetable, saying that it undermines our mission and encourages the enemy to hang in there, and says she will vote against cutting off funds for our troops while they are in harm’s way. If she continues with these positions, she will become the Right of the Democratic 2008 field. Obama may also oppose a funding cutoff, but his focus on a timetable for withdrawal would put him to Hillary’s Left. And former VP candidate John Edwards, who doesn’t sit in the Senate anymore, will loudly proclaim his support for both a timetable and a funding cutoff, making him the left flank of the three-way race.
It’s telling when someone who oozes desperation to win the Presidential election nevertheless cannot make herself change her position on the single subject most likely to get her to the White House. In fact, it tells us two things: First, it tells us that Hillary, who is nobody’s fool, has recognized that only an idiot would withdraw from Iraq instantly or even on a timetable. Second, it tells us that Hillary still has some honor in her: despite the political necessity of shifting towards the anti-War moonbat crowd position on this issue, she can’t make herself do it.
People who are opposed to the war but who think Hillary is the next best Presidential thing since Bill might do well to examine her War stance, to wonder why she baulks at withdrawing troops, and to begin changing their own positions, rather than insisting that she change hers.
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3 Responses to “Giving Hillary credit”
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Au contraire - it doesn’t tell you a thing about either her foolishness or her honor. What it tells you is that she knows she’s going to need some republican and independent red state votes to win, (democrats being the minority party) if she should happen to be nominated - which she still considers automatic.
Neither stupidity nor honor enter into the political calculation.
I agree with this careful assessment of Hillary, Bookworm. Although there’s a little niggle there that wonders if her more sensible war stance is politics to appeal to the right. The left seems to be in favor of govt. entrenchment into every facet of our lives. Yet the biggest govt. mandate of a President - to protect and defend - most of the left wants to ‘defund’. I heard someone say last night that Obama should be glad that Abraham Lincoln didn’t follow his own (Obama’s) cut-and-run strategy when he stood sometimes alone in the Civil War or Obama might be a slave right now instead of running for President.
You might want to ease up on the “credit”, Bookworm. Have you read Air Force Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.) Robert “Buzz” Patterson’s book, “Dereliction of Duty”? He was a military aide to Monica’s Squeeze from May 1996 to May 1998 and one of five individuals entrusted with carrying the “nuclear football” code book. He describes how Bill and Hill, and much of their staff, consistently treated members of the military with disrespect and disdain — and he details the ways in which Clinton undermined the military. If I recall from the book correctly, Hillary would not permit uniformed military personnel inside the WH — meaning WJC apparently wasn’t “the man” of THAT house. A sad commentary on the POTUS.