GOP Gift to Hillary: Own Head on Platter

The Republicans are in the process of turning a strident, power-hungry socialist into a viable candidate for President.

On the one hand, many, including Newt Gingrich, have been sidling up to Hillary Clinton publicly. Why? Mostly because they haven't the courage of actual convictions and so feel the need to look more "centrist." In some cases, it's not even that noble: Some just want attention. Even Dick Morris, a man more shrewd than principled, can see where that'll get them.

Her popularity is also getting a boost from the arranged marriage between former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton — a nuptial orchestrated by current President George W. Bush so he could use Clinton’s visibility to improve the public impression of his response to the tsunami disaster.

All those card-carrying Republicans are using Bill or Hillary to help their own careers by moving their images to the center, in the case of Newt, or to center stage, in the case of Santorum and Frist. But, in doing so, they are slitting their own throats.

The closer Clinton draws to the White House, the more the GOP should stay away from her. Rather than lend her credibility by seeming to bolster her, Republicans should do all they can to ghettoize her on the left. America needs to understand that Clinton is no centrist, and Republicans should not allow themselves to be used to make her appear so.

Worse, the some of the positions the Republicans are staking out these days are so patently absurd that anyone with a modicum of sense and a spine stands to rack up major points by opposing them. One follow-up report on the idiotic flag desecration amendment passed today in the House notes that Senator Clinton has graciously accepted the mantle of defender of freedom of speech.

But an AP survey Wednesday found 35 senators on record as opposing the amendment - one more than the number needed to defeat it if all 100 senators vote, barring a change in position.

Late Wednesday, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., revealed that she would vote against the measure. "I don't believe a constitutional amendment is the answer," Clinton, a possible presidential candidate in 2008, said in a statement.

Of course I'm being sarcastic about Hillary as a "defender" of freedom of speech. Her concern for that is about as deep as the concern she showed for the health of her countrymen when she honchoed the attempted nationalization of the medical sector back in her husband's first term.

Note that she's a key "swing vote" on the amendment in the Senate. She'll probably stick her finger in the wind and change her vote if she thinks doing so will win her enough support among social conservatives to warrant irritating her base a little bit. Her liberal base would see such a reversal as pure politics and put up with it, especially since 3/4 of the states would still have to approve the amendment.

The Republicans, by passing this amendment in the House, have put Hillary Clinton in an enviable position for a political opportunist: She's now a power broker on a hot-button issue she really cares nothing about.

Keep this up, Dumbo, and you will lose the Presidency in '08.

-- CAV

Updates

6-23-05: (1) Corrected bad wording in one sentence. (2) Removed some extra characters. (Has Microsoft replaced one set of substandard character codes with another?)