The Upside-Down-Legged Colossus

Psst - don't tell anybody, but I'm one of those conservatives who "buy into" the "meme" that "Hillary [Clinton] going to run in 2008, get the [Democrat] nomination and then be triumphantly elected President." I think those other conservatives that either can't wait to run against her (much like the Carter campaign couldn't wait to run against Ronald Reagan in 1980) or even think she won't run (much like she didn't run for the Senate in 2000) are submerged in the same parochial denial that afflicted all of us throughout the '90s and kept us from recognizing - not unlike the Left is finding vis-a-vie President Bush - that just because we can't stand Hillary and see her through all her BS spin for exactly what she is doesn't mean a majority - or even large plurality - of the electorate will follow suit.

Lightning can strike twice. The first lesson of history, as George Santayana wrote, is that men never learn from history. And the lesson where the Clintons are concerned is that they're all but impossible to beat because their audacity, ruthlessness, amorality, and staggering talent for calculated mendacity will always exceed anything Republicans can match. Add to that the utter lack of a strong frontrunner on the GOP side and the Bush Justice Department's obliging dispatch of Mrs. Clinton's latest fundraising scandal, and the uphill struggle to retain the White House past 2008 takes on the scale of climbing Mt. Everest in nothing but a jockstrap and a pair of scuffed Nikes.

That's what makes the frankly pathetic efforts of slapdash groups like "Stop Her Now" look like an attempt to clean & jerk a mountain with a pair of pipe cleaners:

The New York-based political group out to stop Hillary Clinton is demanding that Hillary distance herself from comments made by DNC chief Howard Dean.

On June 2, 2005, in remarks before a gathering of Campaign for America’s Future, DNC Chair Howard Dean said that Republicans "have never made an honest living in their lives."

Stop Her Now, [Executive Director William] Black said, has called upon Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to forcefully and publicly denounce these remarks.

"Not only should Hillary Clinton denounce these remarks on behalf of her Republican constituents, but also because they impugn her personal integrity," Black said.

One slight problem: Hillary Clinton doesn't give a rat's ass about her Republican constituents. And she only cares about her Democrat and "independent" constituents only as much as necessary to keep swindling them out of their votes. It's just this kind of roaringly naive appeal to the opposition, which are never and will never be heeded, that makes me embarrassed to be a Republican.

But Black wasn't finished. He even invoked Mrs. Clinton's dad, Hugh Rodham, a lifelong Republican:

Even after his daughter married Democrat Bill Clinton, he (according to Bill Clinton) "never gave up hope that his son-in-law would join him in the Republican Party and support a cut in the capital gains tax."

Black asks, "Does Hillary Clinton believe that her father came to his success dishonestly?"

Yes. Hugh Rodham was evidently a sucker, and his daughter was co-architect of that humiliation. Ditto William Black for thinking Mrs. Clinton susceptible to amateurish emotional manipulation, as though she indulged in weaknesses like familial affection, or anything else that might get in the way of her quest for total power.

"If Hillary Rodham Clinton allows these comments to pass, she will indeed have joined Howard Dean in besmirching the memory of her late father and his life’s work," Black concluded, adding, "Work that clothed and fed Hillary, and paid for her Wellesley education."

Here was her effective answer:

New York Senator Hillary Clinton blasted the press on Monday for going too easy on President Bush, complaining that reporters are letting his administration get away with the worst abuse of power in American history.

"There has never been an administration, I don't believe in our history, more intent upon consolidating and abusing power to further their own agenda," said Mrs. Clinton, whose own administration collected FBI files on opponents and had accusers audited by the IRS.

If this speech to a Manhatten gathering of "Women for Hillary" had any implications for Chairman How, it was as a rebuke for being too soft on the GOP, not too harsh.

It's not all wine and roses for the Gargoyle Queen these days, but one more tell-all expose on top of a mountain of them from the past decade and a half is not even going to slow down Madusa's coronational processional.

And William Black, decked out in an angel costume sitting on her shoulder whispering in her ear as the conscience she's never had and doesn't want....

Well, do you want to say, "RAID!" or shall I?