Decision ‘08

More On Hillary’s Iraq Problem

Hillary Clinton is about to throw this election away; everyone knows she supported the Iraq War: it’s one of her big problems with the Nutroots®. Lately, however, she’s taken to a lame attempt to rewrite history (impossible, in the age of YouTube and Google) by pretending she was against the war all along. This will not only fail to fool the Nutroots®, it will torpedo her credibility and make many of her otherwise likely-supporters furious in its blatant hypocrisy.

Yesterday, we highlighted Christopher Hitchens doing a typical bang-up takedown, and today, it’s Mickey Kaus:

Is Hillary Clinton’s campaign really trying to pretend, through vigorous Webbery, that she didn’t support the war? That’s what Matt Yglesias claims. If true, that’s a bit different than simply stubbornly refusing to apologize for your support; it’s trying to deny that you have anything to refuse to apologize for! And it’s kind of pathetic. Hillary’s had a long time to think about what she’d say in this situation. Not even her husband could get away with that much slickness. He managed to position himself for-and-against Iraq War I, but only because he didn’t have to vote on it (and because the war was over and old news by the time he had to stand before the voters). …

Besides, Hillary, it’s too late for the Nutroots® support; as I’m sure we all remember, that was sewn up a few days ago when John Edwards made his brave, brave stance in favor of the right to use humiliatingly graphic sexual references towards holy personages (as opposed to anything to actually mattered to the voters of America)…

7 Responses to “More On Hillary’s Iraq Problem”

1 Fargus Says:
February 13th, 2007 at 7:38 pm
Can we at least pretend that “holy” is a subjective term, or am I a bigot for even having that thought?
2 Mark Says:
February 13th, 2007 at 7:44 pm
Well, it’s not subjective to Catholics or Christians, and though I understand what you’re saying, the whole point of this was its anti-Catholic slant…by the way, the second blogger is out, though I really think she got caught in the crossfire more than anything…
3 too many steves Says:
February 14th, 2007 at 5:58 am
I don’t understand Hillary’s tactic here, and am surprised that she seems to have fallen into an obvious and politically suicidal trap. She needs the anti-war crowd’s support to win the nomination, but not to win the general election. She voted for and supported the war - she’s indisputably on the record over the past four or five years as doing so. Couldn’t she have come up with a better rationale for the “I made a mistake” excuse?

I thought she was better that this; I expected a more clever, well run, campaign.
4 Fargus Says:
February 14th, 2007 at 8:20 am
Mark: It’s only tangentially related to the Hillary thing, and I apologize for dragging it in that direction, but I’d like to ask what your reaction was to the Mohammed cartoon flap in the Danish press whenever it was that it happened. Not to the Muslim reaction, but to the cartoons themselves, which portrayed Mohammed as a terrorist.

I ask this without snark, even though it probably sounds like that’s my main point.
5 Mark Says:
February 14th, 2007 at 8:28 am
I didn’t like it…a lot of the blogs on the right were publishing or linking to the cartoons as a show of solidarity, but I thought it was needlessly disrespectful. I staked out my position as follows: I understand the free speech implications, and if you want to publish such cartoons, it’s not the wisest thing in the world, but it’s certainly your right.

Just don’t ask me to join in…
6 Fargus Says:
February 14th, 2007 at 8:36 am
Cool.

I just see a lot of hypocrisy on both sides between that case and this Marcotte thing, with both ostensibly maligning figures who are “holy” to large populations. Those on the right who kept publishing the cartoons and acted like Marcotte did the worst thing ever, or those on the left who thought the cartoons were the worst thing ever and that Marcotte did nothing wrong. It’s just not internally consistent. I’m glad to see your view is, though.

For me, personally, I’m partly where you are, partly not. Of course it’s people’s right, free-speech-wise, to publish what they want. My own view of religion and faith tilts me toward the other side from you, though, where I’d say that though people shouldn’t go out of their way to upset others, there are things that are justified by one person’s (or one group’s) faith that are just too big, and affect too many others without that faith, for those faithful to expect to get a free ride on their faith.
7 Mark Says:
February 14th, 2007 at 8:45 am
Well, there’s a definite tendency among some on the right to demonize all Muslims, and it’s just plain wrong…the Danish cartoon controversy veered dangerously close to that territory, and in some cases crossed the line completely…