The Church Lady

I don't think I'm going to find Hillary Clinton's 2008 coronational parade to be nearly as harrowing as it will be for all those clinging to the canard that "she can't possibly win." One, because I've been resigned to her presidency for years now; and two, after the Democrats ran as who and what they really are - NeoBolshevik traitors - and won the 2006 congressional midterms anyway, I have no reason to believe that Hillary couldn't name Osama bin Laden as her running mate and still win two years from now.

Or even Obama bin Barack (editor's note: Not a rap on Barack Obama, just a tweak of all those in the blogosphere who freaked out over the questioning by a few of the Illinois Donk senator's alleged Islamic background)

This week the Clinton machine unveiled what will be the primary PR vehicle for Medusa's long inaugural parade: Hillary as "America's mom":

Forget Soccer Moms and Security Moms; now it's going to be all Moms all the time - with Hillary as the biggest Mom of all.

The "Mom Strategy" is key to presenting the latest iteration of Hillary. She needs to move out of the center space that she populated in her last reincarnation as a moderate. That's over. Because democratic primary voters are squarely at odds with her positions on the war in Iraq, she needs to move on. The "Mom Strategy" gives her a credible way to tack to the left on the war. She's already begun. Last week, she told an NPR audience that she would have voted against the war if only she had known then what she knows now. Woulda, shoulda, coulda.

In furtherance of the new Mom strategy, she has re-released her best-selling book It Takes A Village. This time, she is pictured surrounded by adoring, well-groomed and respectful children on the cover. Just like Mom. This is no coincidence; it's an element of the strategy. The subliminal message: I'm a Mom and I'm running for president. Moms take care of people, they're compassionate and don't want wars. The fact that the book isn't selling well in its re-release - Amazon ranks it at 5,000 - doesn't matter. It's the cover photo that resonates.

Hillary the Hawk may ultimately be the way to win the centrists who dominate the general electorate. But Hillary, the Mom, another Mother for Peace, is the way to capture the left that runs the Democratic primaries. And that's exactly what she's doing.

If this sounds like the Clintonoids stealing Cindy Sheehan's gimmick, go to the head of the class. According to Dick Morris, it's also a feminization of Bill Clinton's 1996 re-election theme:

Hillary's new strategy echoes the 1996 Bill Clinton strategy in pushing a "fatherhood" agenda. Embracing the idea of taking responsibility, enforcing child support, promoting school uniforms and curfews, and fighting against teen smoking and sex and violence on TV, President Clinton promoted the idea of his fatherhood in his bid for re-election. He began his political career as Arkansas' boy Governor. When he ran for president, he was everyone's buddy - eating at McDonalds and jogging in baggy shorts - but as president he needed to grow up and project the subtle image of America's father. In carefully choreographed photos, he was deliberately surrounded by adoring children looking up at him as he pushed his new message.

Now Hillary is seeking to run for president as America's Mom - pro-peace, pro-family, pro-children.

I know, I know - Hillary "pro-peace" after voting for Operation Iraqi Freedom? Hillary trying to quit a war our enemies will never let us escape? The original counter-culture McGovernik "pro-family"? But you have to remember that these are the Clintons we're talking about; outrageous, infuriating audacity is their raison d'etere. And for them it always works.

Still refuse to learn from their first go-round? Try this on for size - Hillary intends to take her victory squarely out of the bowels of Jesusland:

Hillary Clinton has hired an "evangelical consultant” to help woo Christian conservatives in her likely 2008 presidential campaign. The move comes after a similar political operative successfully aided Democratic candidates in several states in the midterm elections.

More than one-quarter of the nation’s voters identify themselves as evangelical — a voter bloc that has long been courted by Republicans.

Clinton’s new hire is Burns Strider, an evangelical Christian who directs religious outreach for House Democrats and is the lead staffer for the Democrats’ Faith Working Group, headed by incoming Majority Whip James Clyburn of South Carolina.

Incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi created the group last year when Democratic strategists observed that the party lost ground in the previous election in part because candidates failed to reach centrist and conservative voters in rural areas, who tend to be churchgoers concerned with moral issues, according to the Washington, D.C.-based publication The Hill.

Strider was an aide to Pelosi when the group was formed and joined Clyburn’s staff as policy director of the Democratic Caucus earlier this year, the paper reported.

"Observers of Clinton’s expressions of faith say religion has always been important to her, that she attended prayer group meetings while first lady, and that she joined a Senate prayer group shortly after winning election in 2000,” The Hill reports.

"Reporters anticipating Clinton’s ’08 presidential run wrongly discount her expressions of faith as cynical political maneuvering," the observers add.

"Reporters" will never do so publicly, because they were on board her campaign ever since January 20, 2001. If they cough and gag at her pharisiacal behavior in private, they are not wrong to do so; their only error would be in doubting that she can ever get the ostensibly ludicrous gimmick over with the electorate.

We should reiterate just to make it clear that the Republicans have not "long courted" religious conservatives, the GOP has OWNED the Christian Right (not the reverse). As a member of that bloc, I find the notion of the party of pagan zealotry and Christophobic repression actually believing that they can "reach out" to and "woo" me to be comedy so bad as to warp back on itself and become almost funny. Mrs. Clinton might just as well announce Satan himself as her running mate for all the traction such a strategy of outright contempt for the intelligence of her political enemies ought to purchase.

But she appears to believe she can do it. And the 2006 election results back her up.

Hillary Clinton, ne Rodham, is going to run for, and be elected, president as the Church Mommy.

Which goes to show that good intentions aren't the only paving material in the road to hell.