I heard To the Point today and was struck by this bit (my transcription):
ANN STONE (national chair, Republicans for Choice): Bottom line: conservatives desperately, desperately want to make sure that Hillary Clinton is never president. In the end, they’re going to go with whoever can stop Hillary. Right now the polls show Giuliani is the first person. Thompson also has a shot. The others fall way below that.
JIM STERNGOLD (guest host): Let me ask you this. That is an interesting point, which I’ve heard, and you make it quite strongly, but why would the Republicans let their race be shaped by the other party?
STONE: Because Hillary Clinton, unlike a lot of the liberal demagogues, actually believes the stuff that she’s talking about. She’s actually going to push a very aggressive agenda and probably do more to shape this country for the next, you know, couple of decades way to the left. She would put everything behind it. She actually believes what she’s saying.
So Stone’s fears about Hillary Clinton are pretty much the opposite of mine. If I thought Clinton was really the most liberal of the Democratic presidential candidates, that she really believed in a liberal agenda, and that she wanted to aggressively reshape the country, I’d feel a lot better about her being the front runner. Instead I think she’s the worst of both worlds: a candidate who’s really not that liberal (and so won’t bring the change that’s needed if she wins) but is viewed by much of the electorate as being far too liberal (and so will have more trouble winning than she should).
[…] September 7th, 2007 2008 , Democrats Why Republicans Hate Hillary: If Only It Were True If I thought Clinton was really the mo […]
—Hilliary Clinton, why she dissappoints « D2 route • 7:59 am, September 7
I guess if you’re a Republican operative, it doesn’t really matter whether you’re a pro-choice Republican who probably disagrees with a significant portion of the Republican Party platform: you’ve gotta stick to the Republican playbook: All Democrats are Liberals, and Liberals are basically Radicals/Socialists. Can’t really rally your base if you’re telling them their political Satan is a moderate. But what I’d like to as the head of Republicans for Choice is who they think their base is.
—Jesse • 10:22 pm, September 10
I heard the same bit and almost had to turn it off in disgust. The worst thing about a candidate is… legitimate opinion? The host was far more delicate than I could have been in following up and asking - exceedingly politely - don’t republican candidates believe in what they say?
Stone informed him that - duh - liberals are all driven by polls. Not Hillary, though!
I can’t decide if it was a pathetic example of someone making up something to resolve their own cognitive dissonance or if she really came to that conclusion.
—Don • 12:12 am, September 19