Hillary Clinton is neither the anti-Christ nor the smartest
politician around. We know, from pretty much everything she has
done in her adult life that she is dishonest, opportunistic, and
someone we cannot possibly trust with the security of our nation.
Forget all that for the moment. Focus on the fact that she, like
Howard Dean, John Kerry and Dennis Kucinich, is a
pure-as-Ivory-Soap liberal.
Unlike the Deanocrat party leadership, Clinton is smart enough
to realize that undiluted hyper-liberalism isn’t a platform that
will support any successful presidential candidacy. Clinton has, at
least since her college days, been a near-radical liberal. (Any who
doubt this should read Peggy Noonan’s The Case Against Hillary
Clinton.) But having lived with Lil’ Billy for so long, and
having helped create his post-Vietnam “New Democrat” persona, she
knows how to conceal her liberalism under a cloak of phony
moderation. Ever since 9-11, liberal Clinton has been wrapping
herself in a political chrysalis. From it, with the aid of
prominent Republicans who should know better, has now emerged the
moderate Clinton butterfly.
There is a growing gap between Democrat voters and those who
fund the Democrats’ campaigns, and their problem is being
exacerbated weekly by Howard Dean. When he says something such as
the Republican Party is the Christian White People’s Party, the
Democrats’ hyperlib base is energized. But all that energy
short-circuits their donor base. The Dems’ party activists want to
push their party farther off into the lefties’ parallel universe
while the money men keep their checkbooks closed, hoping against
hope that an electable moderate will suddenly appear. They are,
quite literally, banking on Hillary to fill that bill.
To succeed, Sen. Clinton has to do two things. First, she has to
keep the hyperlibs comforted and quiet. They trust her because she
reassures them periodically that she is one of them. Speaking
earlier this month, she said of President Bush and his team, “There
has never been an administration, I don’t believe in our history,
more intent upon consolidating and abusing power to further their
own agenda.” But when the press tut-tuts about the outrageous
rhetoric of the day, as the ever-reliable Dana Milbank did in the Washington Post
yesterday, we read nothing about Hillary. Only Dean, Harry Reid and
a slew of Republicans get mentioned. Clinton, of course, sits
quietly while Dick Durbin slanders America and those serving at
Guantanamo Bay. Her positions are as malleable as her husband’s,
tailored to whatever audience she addresses. And she can be
confident that her payments of tribute to the hyperlibs will be
buried by the press. Tying her down should be easy. But don’t count
on it. As Slick as he is, she is just as Slippary.
The second thing she must do is convincingly appear to be a
moderate. Gaining a seat on the Senate Armed Services Committee was
a real coup. She travels to Iraq and Afghanistan, claiming her
pride in being the senator representing the home of the Tenth
Mountain Division. The troops don’t buy it. When they are dragooned
into a Hillary photo op, as one young officer
was in Iraq last year, they find ways to show their dislike and
distrust for her. If only prominent Republicans — Newt Gingrich,
Rick Santorum and John McCain first among them — were as honest
and steadfast as the common soldier. But they’re not. They’re
playing the useful idiot to Clinton’s claim to the legacy of Scoop
Jackson.
Gingrich is bizarrely eager to aid Hillary’s campaign to
credential herself as a moderate, even conservative, Dem. First he
teamed up with Clinton to endorse her bill on health information
technology. He described her as “more practical” than Dean or
Kerry. Perhaps he meant to damn her with faint praise, but all he
accomplished was to give her an invaluable sound bite to use in
future campaign commercials. Gingrich then defended his odd couple
alliance to Bill O’Reilly, saying that, “If Hillary Clinton is
willing to support a good, practical, common-sense [bill], then we
should take her support.” Yes, Mr. Gingrich, we should. But why go
the next step and help her change her image when she isn’t changing
her beliefs? Perhaps we should ask titular Senate majority leader
Bill Frist, who joined her in mid-June in sponsoring another bill
meant to reduce doctors’ reliance on paper records.
HER MOST UNEXPECTED PAL is Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), who is as
rock-ribbed a conservative as you’re likely to find in the Senate.
But rocklike ribs may be accompanied by political soft-headedness.
Beaming her “I landed another sucker” smile at a March press
conference, Clinton shared the stage with Santorum to announce a
bill they cosponsored to measure the effect of television and the
Internet on children. It’s bad enough for a conservative to be
sponsoring this kind of feel good nonsense — the bill will not
pass, and will mean nothing to our children — but why do it in a
way that helps Clinton claim the family values credentials of a
moderate?
Republican presidential aspirant John McCain should be cagier
than the others. If his dream comes true, he could be running
against Clinton in 2008. But McCain has done more to re-credential
Hillary than the others combined. He has gone to Iraq with her,
joined with her in nominating Georgian President Mikhail
Saakashvili and Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko for the Nobel
Peace Prize. Most awfully, McCain appeared on Meet the
Press with her, talking from Iraq to Tim Russert on February
20.
The Meet the Press joint appearance was the greatest
bonus Clinton could possibly have received for the trip. Appearing
with McCain gave Clinton’s claim to national security expertise
credence when it would, before, have been laughable. The two
debated the possibility of scheduling withdrawals from Iraq —
Clinton saying a schedule was inadvisable “at the moment” — the
strength of the insurgency, and what they talked about with the
nascent Iraqi government. McCain, however wrong he often is, has
enormous credibility on national defense issues. Appearing with him
from Iraq gives Clinton a boost she desperately needed. As bad as
that was, it was made much worse when Russert asked McCain if
Clinton would make a good president.
McCain said, “I am sure that Senator Clinton would make a good
president. I happen to be a Republican and would support,
obviously, a Republican nominee, but I have no doubt that Senator
Clinton would make a good president.” Remember that line. You’ll be
seeing and hearing it all too often in 2008.
Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid can be defeated, easily, with
the facts. She is a pure liberal, uninterested in national security
and as incapable of defending America as her husband was. She is
working very hard to make people believe that she is something she
isn’t: a moderate, defense-minded Democrat who cares deeply about
America’s safety, our families and our future. If her false
advertising campaign succeeds, it will be because her Republican
enablers made it possible.
TAS contributing editor Jed Babbin is the author
of Inside the Asylum: Why the UN and Old Europe Are
Worse Than You Think (Regnery, 2004).
