If my mother, dyed through and through as a Democrat, one of the few who voted for Mondale, Dukakis, et al, if my mother doesn't think Hillary stands a chance in 2008, for various reasons having nothing to do with HRC's fitness to lead, why is Ms. Clinton running? There are too many on the right who foam at the mouth when discussing Ms. Clinton, and there are too many on the left, like myself, who are disgusted by Ms. Clinton's long history of parsing political nuance and ending up as basically a Nixonian Democrat. Or a Nixonian Republican. Didn't Ms. Clinton work for the Nixon campaign in '72?
The Atlantic: Take Two ... One spring Wednesday, a few months into the term, Senator Sam Brownback’s turn came to lead the group, and he rose intending to talk about a recent cancer scare. But as he stood before his colleagues Brownback spotted Clinton, and was overcome with the impulse to change the subject of his testimony. “I came here today prepared to share about this experience in my life that has caused great suffering, the result of which has deepened my faith,” Brownback said, according to someone who watched the scene unfold. “But I’m overcome now with only one thought.” He confessed to having hated Clinton and having said derogatory things about her. Through God, he now recognized his sin. Then he turned to her and asked, “Mrs. Clinton, will you forgive me?” Clinton replied that she would, and that she appreciated the apology. ...Clinton and Brownback went on to cosponsor one measure protecting refugees fleeing sexual abuse, and another to study the effects on children of violent video games and television shows. “That morning helped make our working relationship,” Brownback told me recently. “It brought me close to someone I did not ever imagine I would become close to.” Since then, Clinton has teamed up on legislation with many members of the prayer group.
Hillary Clinton’s proficiency in this innermost sanctum has unnerved some of the capital’s most exalted religious conservatives. “You’re not talking about some tree-hugging, Jesus-is-my-Buddha sort of stuff,” says David Kuo, a former Bush official in the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, who worked with Clinton to promote joint legislation and who, like Brownback, has apologized to her for past misdeeds. “These are powerful evangelicals she’s meeting with.” Like many conservatives, they are caught between warring dictates of their faith: the religious one, which requires them to embrace a fellow Christian, and the political one, more powerful in some, which causes them to instinctively distrust the motives of a Clinton. Everyone in Washington experiences their dilemma at one time or another—the lack of an Archimedean point from which to judge Hillary Clinton.
The Atlantic has more, including:
But Clinton has adapted surprisingly well to the byways of the Senate, becoming what few could have foreseen: a wily manipulator of the Senate’s outsize egos, and a master of cloakroom politics. This has come at the cost of some of her most deeply held values. However flawed Clinton’s health-care plan was in execution, it was undergirded by an element of sincere idealism that is all but absent from her Senate record. Clinton has chosen systematic caution as the path to power.
Tags: 2008_election, /Clinton, /Democrats
I am for Billary, I noticed surfing the Net how hard it will be for her or for Obama. Obama, I got mail accusing him of having been educated in a Muslim school for terrorists, of course a racist attempt to discredit him.
Hillary, I noticed several sites about the "real Hillary" "the Clintons" and similar garbage which shows her famously nicknamed "vast right-wing conspiracy" is alive and well. She was raised a Methodist. From what I understand of Protestants, those are the most mellow ones. She is a politician. If she unifies the country around the themes she proposed I will be a happy camper.