Bill Is Not Spock

See if you can follow the logic of the Great Ejaculator:

Former President Clinton, defending his senator-wife's statements on abortion, said Wednesday that Democrats are held to a double standard.

The comment came during remarks to Campus Progress, a left-leaning student group. He said young people in his party should speak directly to conservative voters.

He contended that Republicans have defined the abortion debate in a way that boxes in Democrats.

"So for example, if you're a Democrat and you have sort of normal impulses, you're a sellout, like when Hillary said abortion is a tragedy for virtually everybody who undergoes it, we ought to do all we can to reduce abortion," Clinton said.

"All of a sudden," he continued, the media began asking, "'Is she selling out? Is she abandoning her principles?' But if John McCain, who's pro-life, works with Hillary on global warming, he's a man of principle moving to the middle."

Maybe it's late in the day and I'm too (non-medicinally) wasted to follow this derailed train of thought, but can anybody tell me what the devil he's talking about?

Oh, I get the general idea, which, as you might have expected, is utterly bogus. Republicans couldn't "box in" Democrats if the latter herded themselves into a huge rectangular formation and fell sound asleep standing up. It's the motion sickness-inducing meandering details that I can't follow.

If Democrats are finding themselves with less and less room to maneuver on abortion, perhaps it's because the center of public opinion on that issue is maintaining the rightward tack it's been on for over a decade. And that is a healthy cultural trend in answer to the steadily escalating anti-life extremism of people like Mrs. Clinton. Why else would she have made the pretense of pandering to conservative voters?

Is Mr. Bill really suggesting that the Extreme Media and the moveon.org crowd are being unwittingly manipulated by...well, I guess it'd be Karl Rove, since he's our opposition-designated "Wizard of Oz"? Thing is, I don't recall any big hue & cry from the Left against Hillary back in January when she, fooling absolutely nobody, offered her hubby's "Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare" boilerplate. And tell me, how did she vote on the 2003 Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act again? Wouldn't the manipulator in this equation be Mrs. Clinton herself?

But the parallel with Darth Queeg completely loses me. Or maybe in my fatigue I'm mistaking disingenuousness for confusion. Why on Earth would the EM criticize the Arizona Avenger for abandoning conservative principles? That's what makes "Sailor" the press' favorite Pachyderm.

Maybe the analogy would make more sense if McCain had moved in Hillary's direction on abortion. But the overarching reality - that McCain really is a sell-out while Mrs. Clinton was just "triangulating" - completely drowns out whatever implication Sick Willie was trying to put over.

Maybe that's what has me stumped. Can anybody in their right mind be sold the absurdity that the EM is out to get the dragon who would be queen?

Oh, wait, Clinton was talking to a group of Mooreons, wasn't he?

Now it finally makes sense.

Wonder if they awarded King Astroturf an honorary tinfoil scepter....