Hillary!
Publius tells us today that he's been wooed by Hillary Clinton's early moves towards the '08 Democratic nomination.
Frankly, '08 is so distant (unless you are insane enough to want to run for president), that I find such talk irrelevant. Fact is, '06 is the next test, and unless we begin to win back some seats in Congress, it won't matter which Democrat is our next president (and on that front, you can help by scrolling down to the next post).
But I will add this to the debate. When she decided to run for the Senate, it was assumed that the vast right wing hatred of her would fill the campaign coffers of Giuliani/Lazio and that the howling attacks on her would ultimately do too much damage to allow her to effectively campaign. The first was true. Money poured in from around the country, but it poured in fairly equally to both campaigns since fear of Hillary hatred drove Democratic activists to counter their ideological opponents. As to the second fear, that the smear tactics and name-calling would damage her, it never came to pass. On the contrary, the nastier her opponents got, the better off she looked. In fact, when Lazio, aided by a smarmy Tim Russert during their debate, tried to make hay off of her response to her husband's philandering, fence-sitting moderates were appalled. And her poll numbers with women shot up; more importantly, the sweet-faced Lazio's numbers tanked with women who didn't appreciate his taking Russert's scummy piece of bait.
So if she does run, I say, bring it on. It brings out the worst in some pretty dreadful people. In fact, in one sense she's the ideal candidate. The GOP has to do some odd contortions to keep the extremists in the party from grabbing the microphone. With Hillary as an opponent, I doubt they'll be able to hide the ugly face of a large and powerful faction of the Republican Party.
Frankly, '08 is so distant (unless you are insane enough to want to run for president), that I find such talk irrelevant. Fact is, '06 is the next test, and unless we begin to win back some seats in Congress, it won't matter which Democrat is our next president (and on that front, you can help by scrolling down to the next post).
But I will add this to the debate. When she decided to run for the Senate, it was assumed that the vast right wing hatred of her would fill the campaign coffers of Giuliani/Lazio and that the howling attacks on her would ultimately do too much damage to allow her to effectively campaign. The first was true. Money poured in from around the country, but it poured in fairly equally to both campaigns since fear of Hillary hatred drove Democratic activists to counter their ideological opponents. As to the second fear, that the smear tactics and name-calling would damage her, it never came to pass. On the contrary, the nastier her opponents got, the better off she looked. In fact, when Lazio, aided by a smarmy Tim Russert during their debate, tried to make hay off of her response to her husband's philandering, fence-sitting moderates were appalled. And her poll numbers with women shot up; more importantly, the sweet-faced Lazio's numbers tanked with women who didn't appreciate his taking Russert's scummy piece of bait.
So if she does run, I say, bring it on. It brings out the worst in some pretty dreadful people. In fact, in one sense she's the ideal candidate. The GOP has to do some odd contortions to keep the extremists in the party from grabbing the microphone. With Hillary as an opponent, I doubt they'll be able to hide the ugly face of a large and powerful faction of the Republican Party.
posted by John at 12:11 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home