Hillary's Spring Training

As the 2008 presidential campaign draws inexorably closer over the far political horizon, Cal Thomas provides us with a fresh, and always useful, reminder about the presumptive Democrat nominee:

[Dick] Morris asks us to "remember that while Bill is a moderate who becomes a liberal when he must ... Hillary is a liberal who pretends moderation when she has to."

In our feel-good age, we want to be told what we want to hear, and Hillary Clinton is the ideal pander candidate. Whoever runs against her will have his work cut out for him ... or her.

The hallmark of the Clinton machine is ruthless, two-step audacity:

1) Say whatever you have to say to get elected;

2) Do whatever you want to do once you're in office.

And as re-election draws near, repeat step #1.

Sure enough, the junior senator from New York already has the routine up and furiously running in her formality of a 2006 re-election bid:

Senator Hillary Clinton is using a new campaign video to boast that she's delivered on her promise to bring economic development to upstate New York - even though the region has actually lost tens of thousands of jobs since she was elected.

The new video features testimonials from an array of New York politicos, including New York City Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum, who touts Mrs. Clinton's economic success.

"She has not only promised that she would deliver economic development projects for upstate New York, she has actually, in fact, done it," Gotbaum claims. "She is someone who is a fighter for us every day in Washington."

In fact, while Mrs. Clinton campaigned six years ago on a promise to generate 200,000 new jobs for upstate New York, she not only failed to deliver - the region lost 40,000 jobs. According to Public Policy Institute in Albany, the Empire State has lost 112,000 jobs overall since sending the former first lady to the Senate.

"It's the economy, stupid" - check. Broken promise (that she could never have directly kept anyway short of adding 240,000 constituents to her staff) - check. Brazenly dishonest and arrogant boast that she kept it - check. Forced backpedal and blame deflection - just a minute....

"I didn't have the benefit of a Democratic Congress," she told the [Syracuse Post-Standard].

Check. It's all the Republicans' fault. The same Republicans that have given the country a sustained economic boom with over three million new jobs in the wake of her husband's recession, the 9/11 attacks, and despite two major hurricanes in the past year and spiraling energy prices. If only the Donks had been running the show, raising taxes through the roof, pouring thousands of pages of new regulations into the Federal Register, and nationalizing health care once and for all, the poor, huddled masses of upstate New York would be in fat city.

But once again we have to remember the basics of Clintonism: the truth doesn't matter. Facts are irrelevant. "Reality" is whatever will con enough people into backing them over their enemies. And nobody is better at it than they.

It's that ruthless audacity that GOPers never quite grasped. Somehow I doubt the current ruling party is any more savvy now than it was back then. But a steady stream of grass-roots reminders can't hurt - especially given the pain that will ensue otherwise.