Hill's Hell

Is there anybody but Hillary who doesn't recognize that the following is backwards?

NEW YORK (AP) - Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton suggested Sunday that Barack Obama's campaign had injected racial tension into the presidential contest, saying he had distorted for political gain her comments about Martin Luther King's role in the civil rights movement.
"This is an unfortunate story line the Obama campaign has pushed very successfully," the former first lady said in a spirited appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press." "I don't think this campaign is about gender, and I sure hope it's not about race."
....As evidence the Obama campaign had pushed the story, Clinton advisers pointed to a memo written by an Obama staffer compiling examples of comments by Clinton and her surrogates that could be construed as racially insensitive. The memo later surfaced on a handful of political Web sites.

To which Obama responds:

Obama later called Clinton's accusations "ludicrous," and said he found Clinton's comments about King to be ill-advised and unfortunate.
"If Senator Clinton wants to be distracted by the sorts of political point-scoring that was evident today then that is going to be her prerogative,"

Is there anyone in the world who doesn't recognize that Obama is right and that it's the Clintons who are raising the race issue?

From my standpoint as a Republican this is quite excellent. I've always considered the Clintons politically stupid. Their only political gift is to create hatred, to define "sides", and to gain immense support then from their side. During the nineties it was "the vast right wing conspiracy". This demonized the right, solidified the left. How many people on the right do you think thereafter were fond of Clinton? It was very useful for Bill, very damaging to the unity of the country.

They're exercising that same talent still, to split their opposition. This time though, dumb turkeys that they are, they are splitting their own party just to get the nomination. Maybe they'll succeed. Couldn't be anything better for Republicans. If they get the nomination by demonizing Barack they've lost blacks as an automatic part of the Democrat coalition. Without blacks 95% Democrat, there are no Democrat victories.

A good thing about this, about the Clinton personalities, is that they can't help themselves. They see themselves as the Party, anything opposed to them is the enemy --and anybody opposed to them is an enemy, they are not just people with different views-- and emotionally, they can not help themselves, they must strike out. It's righteousness, enemies must be destroyed. And so, righteously, in the end they will destroy the party. They must get what they want. It is inconceivable to them that what they want is anything other than what all good people should want. And this personality disfigurement, though bad for the nation, sure is good for Republicans.

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Jim Geraghty, of the campaign spot, has got to be one of the most sane men in America.

Sunday, January 13, 2008

What's To Like About Huck?

I don't know if this will persuade anyone, but here's where I'm coming from... If you're a member of any one of the "legs of the stool" in the Reaganite/conservative coalition, you're used to being portrayed in the media as... well, the last word of "legs of the stool" but with a different meaning, if you catch my drift. If you're an economic conservative, you're painted as a greedy miser, refusing to give government much-needed funds to take care of orphans, old people, and kittens. If you're a hawk who believes in a tough, aggressive stance against foreign threats, you're painted as a bloodthirsty warmonger, often in the service of a secretive, sinister cabal.

But I think we can give the "Most Endlessly Smeared" award to the social conservatives, who want a society where moms and dads don't have their daughters to grow up to be a slow-motion train wreck like one of the Spears sisters, and as a result have been painted as intolerant, hateful, ignorant, enraged, repressed, and snake-handling, ever since the Washington Post stated as fact in a front page story that they were "poor, uneducated, and easy to command."

Enter Mike Huckabee on the national stage.

If Huckabee's the nominee, the media may yet attempt to portray him as a fundamentalist maniac. They may even succeed....

But the Huckabee we see on the campaign trail today - bass guitar-playing, joke-telling, always deploying the right anecdote at the right time, ol' Huck - has already become one of the most influential social conservatives in America today....
I have my gripes with Huckabee, but when this show is over, I don't want him to wrap up his tent and go home. The man's a fighter, a communicator, and a silver-tongued persuader - skills the Republican Party doesn't exactly have a surplus of these days.

And in a previous post (Huckabee Charms...):

Actually, as much as Huckabee may grate on some righties from time to time — you know, the tax hikes, or the Obama-esque talk of raising hope, or the ugly portrait of American businessmen painted with the broadest of brushes, or the national workplace smoking ban, or the vague generalities when talking foreign policy, or the ten millionth homespun anecdote in response to a question about a complicated problem... where was I?

Ah, yes - we've witnessed about two decades of all-out political warfare, and Mike Huckabee appears on the horizon as a guy who, through good humor and charm, can defuse a lot of the explosive tension and furious tempers that have come to dominate our political discourse. It's a real gift, and even as some folks say they don't want Huckabee to be their nominee, they ought to recognize he's a gifted communicator who could do great things for the Republican party.

Geraghty for vice President!

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And Medved has a splendid post, commenting on this poor support for Romney:

As I’ve said repeatedly over the last several weeks, the problem for Romney isn’t his faith, it’s his phoniness. It’s even worse to see that in-authenticity combined with an all-too-visible mean and nasty streak in going after his rivals.

I know many good people and committed conservatives who say they like Romney and insist, despite his back-to-back losses against flawed candidates in Iowa and New Hampshire, that he’d still be the strongest Republican in November.

How then, do they explain his devastatingly poor performance in the latest trial heats – a performance that corresponds to his similarly feeble showing in prior polls (particularly against Obama) conducted by Rasmussen, USA Today/Gallup, and Zogby?

With key primaries coming up in Michigan and South Carolina, support for Romney would seem to indicate a powerful and problematic Republican death wish.

I should try to do some psycho work on these buggers. So many conservative thinkers I've read now seem to be nuts.