Giving Hillary credit

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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