Look, I have other work to do this morning - finishing a shocking article about the Supreme Court, on an issue that probably merits being made into a coffee-table book and a documentary too, and I have bills to pay... but Hillary Clinton's nuclear-madwoman, nuclear saber-rattling politics have my hackles up...
I take such talk seriously, for the insanity it is.
There's plenty of precedent for what I'm about to say: many of the NeoCons who gave America the gift of the war in Iraq and now militate for an even more disastrous war with Iran started out as Scoop Jackson democrats who got mad at the anti-War wing of the Democratic Party and then moved right.
Maybe it was the night out at the local pizza joint which put me into the sort of testy mood such that I'm having at this now, but too many data points have piled up and so I'm declaring :
Hillary Clinton is a NeoCon.
I don't say that lightly.
Hillary Clinton's insane new "nuclear umbrella" policy, her MoveOn bashing, her attacks on Obama's "toughness", her long term association with "The Family", her 1996 role in helping to destroy welfare, her religious views as described in an article by Jeff Sharlet and Katherine Joyce, all that and much, much more, has provoked me to say something I've been thinking for a long time:
Hillary Clinton is a NeoCon.
VIDEO below : Dr. StrangeRedPhone
Data point: Clinton bashes MoveOn, rattles Firedoglake supporter Jane Hamsher.
Data point: Clinton proposes dangerously nutty "nuclear umbrella" idea, apparently blindsiding her own military adviser Wes Clark. Clinton also just attacked Barack Obama's "toughness and she's been at this game through the primaries. Remember the notorious Red Phone ad ? Well, I did a short video send up of that shady piece of work, posted again at the end of this piece. Fact is, the main reason I'm writing this is that I'm HIGHLY uncomfortable with the idea of Hillary Clinton waking up at 3 AM to a "Red Phone: call and not because I think she's jumpy or unstable - rather, I consider her ideologically in league with NeoConservatives and also with The Family [subject of a new book, due out in mid May, by Rolling Stone writer Jeff Sharlet] which has been gunning for the New Deal since Roosevelt created it and espouses American and Christian fundamentalist military conquest of the entire planet. I'm not saying Clinton's views are identical but those are people she hangs around with and her history, actions and proposed policies show it.
Data point: Alexandria, VA Focus Group agency, reported in a November 9, 2007 Mother Jones story, asked group members how they'd feel if a) George Bush or b) Hillary Clinton were to attack Iran. As a point of fact Clinton voted to give George Bush authority to use military force v. Iraq and later voted to classify Iran's Revolutionary Guard as a "terrorist" group. As discussed here, Israeli General Oded Tira has suggested Hillary Clinton would be the Israeli right's/Likud's best target, in the Democratic Party to lobby in the effort to get the US to attack Iran.
Data Point: Hillary Clinton was one of the earliest supporters of "Charitable Choice" which laid the legal foundation for George W. Bush's "Faith Based Initiative". David Kuo, "Family" member, working with then-Senator John Ashcroft, helped draft the "Charitable Choice" provisions that Bill Clinton then signed into law as part of the 1996 "Welfare Reform" bill that essentially destroyed welfare, one of New Deal/Great Society cornerstones which had been in the gunsights of religious conservatives & fellow travelers since the program's inception. as I have previously written,
Prior to 1996 there were barriers to direct US government funding of sectarian religious groups.
"Charitable Choice" tore those barriers down, and Hillary Clinton cheered the process on.
As Don Dilulio has recently written, Hillary Clinton was an enthusiastic supporter of the "Charitable Choice" legislation, including the first "Charitable Choice" provision that religious right movement conservatives inserted in the 1996 Welfare Reform Bill and which David Kuo described as a "radical" provision.
HRC supported the 1996 "Charitable Choice" provision, to Welfare Reform, that made George W. Bush's "Faith Based Initiative" legally possible by making it legal for federal funds, allocated for the provision of social services, to go directly to sectarian religious groups. David Kuo, who helped write the provision [for John Ashcroft], described it as "radical" (in "Tempting Faith: An Inside Story Of Political Seduction").
Data Point: Bill Clinton says Hillary Clinton and John McCain are "very close" (see video) and the two could be seen sitting together, last year, at The Family's National Prayer Breakfast. Libertarian Matt Welch, who has a new book out on McCain, says John McCain is an uber-NeoCon.
BELOW: "John McCain;s Father Rolls Over in the Grave"