WSJ Endorses Hillary--Well, Sort Of
Thu Jan 18, 2007 at 03:30:46 PM PDT
I was hardly surprised by today's lead editorial in the Wall Street Journal, "The Democratic Field : It's Hillary Versus Everybody Else." It's further evidence that Hillary Rodham Clinton is the candidate the Right wants the Democratic Party to nominate.
There are two reasons why, and they're inconsistent with one another. The first reason is that she's the only figure in either party who can unite the Republicans, who are about to wage the kind of intra-party civil war that sank them in 1964 and 1976. With Senator Clinton at the head of the ticket, the neocons, the theocons, the "starve the beast" ideologues, and the libertarians will find common ground one last time to keep her out of the White House.
The second reason, which the Journal article hints at, is explained below.
The Right views Senator Clinton the least bad alternative in the event of a Republican debacle in 2008. The precedent for this is the British election of 1997. The Tories had become tired and fragmented, and the Labour Party had overhauled its image, choosing as its leader Tony Blair, a "New Labour" type who helped purged his party of its equivalent of McGovernism.
Enter Rupert Murdoch. He decided to call off the dogs on Blair, figuring that if the Tories were swept out, he could do business with the new Prime Minister and that he wouldn't break too much of the political furniture. Labour won the 1997 election. Blair got Britain into the Iraq debacle, rolled back civil liberties at home, and engaged in finger-wagging moralizing toward his critics. In other words, he's the British version of Hillary Rodham Clinton. So it's hardly a coincidence that last year, Murdoch hosted a fund-raiser for her.
Why are the war hawks of the Right so fond of Senator Clinton? Read the money quote at the very end of the Journal's editorial:
There are cycles in politics, and, after eight years of Republicans in the White House, Democrats in 2008 will have the public's normal desire for change on their side. On the other hand, they will also have to show they can be trusted on national security in a post 9/11 world, especially running against the likes of Republicans John McCain or Rudy Giuliani. Mrs. Clinton's studied middle-ground on security suggests she understands that.
There it is again: the falsehood that "Democrats are weak on national security," a falsehood that has been repeated endlessly by the hacks at the Democratic Leadership Council and, of course by erstwhile Democrat Joe Lieberman.
And what do those words really mean? A partial translation can be found earlier in the editorial:
From her national perch on the Armed Services Committee, Mrs. Clinton has so far also walked a remarkable tightrope on the Iraq war, only recently coming out for some sort of "cap" on the number of troops. A major story over the coming year will be whether she can resist the defeatist tug of her party's antiwar left as she tries to win the Democratic nomination.
The Journal still equates "hawkish on Iraq" with "strong on national security," even though expert after expert has argued that George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq--supported by people like Senator Clinton, who voted to hand Mr. Bush a blank check--has made this country less secure.
The bottom line is that the Right fears a Democratic win in 2008, and is hedging its bets on a DLC hawk who, more likely than not, will keep a large American troop presence in Iraq and continue much of George W. Bush's neoconservative foreign policy. If she's elected, the name of the policy will change--can you say "muscular liberalism?"--and the names and faces will be different, but not much of substance will change.
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