Saturday, November 17, 2007

An Armey Of One

Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey agrees with me that President Hillary Rodham is inevitable.

Why? Two reasons.

1) For now, she remains Hillary Clinton:

Hillary’s minor stumbles in the MSNBC debate notwithstanding, she is simply running the most disciplined and effective campaign. She’s one of the most able politicians in America, and no one should underestimate her desire to be President and her calculating focus.

What you need to understand is that Hillary Clinton is, quite simply, craftier and more aggressive than the rest of the field. I know this firsthand, having battled with the Clinton Administration throughout the 1990’s while serving as a leader in Congress. She’s only gotten tougher since then....learn[ing] on the job and evolv[ing] her tactics.

Her latest health-care plan is more of the same stuff — greater federal control of our lives — but this time she’s presenting it in a way that is far more politically savvy. She leaves open questions of funding and enforcement, and is actively working to buy off the groups who opposed her plan in 1993.

Hillary Clinton and her agenda are not going to fade away. She is relentless and determined. Once she resolves a course of action in her mind, she is not going to be wishy-washy. The other candidates, and the rest of the world, will quickly learn that Hillary Clinton means business.

No doubt, Hillary Clinton has the Democrat primary all wrapped up. A couple of one-term senators are simply no match for the political machine she and her husband have built.

This is the electoral graveyard past which the "Hillary's high negatives make her unelectable" wishful thinkers on the starboard side of the aisle are whistling. That political machine has the entire Enemy Media as its enlisted adjunct, as we saw just the other night. It hasn't even started its engines yet, as all her Nib requires to capture the 2008 Democrat nomination is her party's '90s nostalgia and its Bushophobic bloodlust. Three months from now, after her Asian fundraising racket has illicitly raked in another fifty million bucks to go with the eighty million it's already precipitated, we're going to see a nine month propaganda blitzkrieg like nothing the Clintonoids ever produced during Mr. Bill's reign. It'll make the year-long, ChiComm-financed 1996 macarena pre-empting of Bob Dole look like....well, the pre-Viagraed '96 Dole-Kemp debacle.

Whether the GOP sacrificial goat is Rudy or Mitt or Fred, his general election viability won't survive to St. Patrick's Day. The Clintonoids will "flash-Bushify" him so swiftly and furiously that he'll be buried before he's even collected the threshold delegate. This process will, of course, be less than entirely honest, as Dubya's "Big Government conservatism" will be ignored, and his personal war-fueled unpopularity will be smeared like dog feces all over each and every aspect of the conservatism that Mr. Armey insists the GOP return to. The Republican nominee's only path of "escape" will be to tack left, aping Mrs. Clinton, ensuring the very base split that Mr. Armey fears, and turning the Empress' coronational processional into a partisan rout.

By Memorial Day it'll already be over, and we'll have to endure six months of howlingly gloating garbage time. And trust me on this one, folks: if you thought libs were insufferable fifteen years ago, you better start preparing for their vengefulness a year from now. The term "reign of terror" is far more serious prognostication than it will ever be hyperventilating hyperbole.

Hillary Clinton does not have her own version of the "New Tone."

Oh, hell, do I even need to bother with Armey's second prooffered reason? To wit, that the GOP has to "return to their Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan roots"? Yeah, I'd love to see that, but I have to wonder if the Reagan and Gingrich "revolutions" weren't - not to be contrarian or anything - too successful, in the sense of causing the American people to forget what the Democrats are really all about.

It's been thirteen years since the Left had unchecked power over the country. Thirteen years in which, yes, Republicans in Congress certainly underperformed fiscally, aside from balancing the budget in the late '90s and enacting the Bush tax cuts, but in which they also blocked the rampaging Bolshevism of their opponents by the simple implement of being in the majority. That memory lapse is the only conceivable explanation (alongside Americans' traditional short martial attention span - or "war fatigue," if you want to be satirical about it) for how the Democrats could have gotten back into power on Capitol Hill a year ago. With the Clinton Machine clearing the way before her like a bulldozer; the indellible, tell-tale chickenheartedness that always overwhelms its hapless Republican opponents; and the sheer fact that there are millions of eligible voters in the pool now who have no memory of Medusa's first attempt at nationalizing the entire health care industry, there is no reason to believe that a "far more politically savvy" second try - with Hillary as de jure president rather than merely de facto - won't be successful, if not hugely so.

After all, there will always be a majority of voters who want to believe there's a free lunch. And that's precisely what Mrs. Clinton will be dangling in front of their beady, greedy little eyes.

Mr. Armey doesn't believe the Republican cause is hopeless. But he shares the conventional wisdom that its "brand" image is in the toilet, and desperately needs right-wing refurbishment. I certainly don't disagree with that, but I think he unwisely discounts the personality factor of the candidates we have to offer.

Unfortunately, that factor is, on balance, probably not a positive one. Indeed, I see the propaganda carpet-bombing waiting on the launching pad for each GOP top-tier possibility as being cruelly ironic.

Rudy Giuliani will be attacked as, ironically, a de facto mafioso (he's Italian, and his police chief, Bernard Kerik, was a crook) and a Bushistic crypto-fascist (former government prosecutor, prominent leader on 9/11, supports the war). Don't be surprised if the Clintonoids play up his social liberalism to boot. His "fiestiness" and eagerness to take on the Chappaqua Squaw will fall under the "politics of piling on" template that Tim Russert caused them to prematurely deploy.

They'll go after Mitt Romney the way we should have gone after Bill Clinton fifteen years ago: "plastic," "phony," "slick". They'll play up his formerly held pro-abortion stances as well. How grievously unfortunate for us that Romney is far more Rick Lazio than Slick Willie.

And then there's my guy, Fred Thompson, who will get the Bob Dole "He's too old" treatment - but who also agrees with Mr. Armey's assessment.

The difference with Fred is that he alone in the GOP field has the demeanor that can pose potentially insurmountable problems for Hillary. Rudy's aggressive approach will just make her look sympathetic, as we've already seen. Romney can't do aggressive in any case, and if anybody is prepared for "slickness," you'd have to believe it's the Clintonoids. But FDT's avuncular sobriety could prove baffling to Senator Thunder Thighs. It's kind of like if you scrubbed away the "Sith" image that's been tarred on Dick Cheney the past seven years, softened the bluntness without diminishing his gravitas, and added a dollop of charisma and stage presence. When he makes the case for, say, Social Security reform, he does so with such good-natured unflappability, in such a calm, matter-of-fact manner, that any listener who is persuadable in the slightest cannot help but be impressed.

It is the combination of message and personality mode that is guaranteed to provoke a brittle leftist ideologue like Mrs. Clinton in exactly the way that Tim Russert did a couple of weeks ago. This contrast between her and Thompson at a debate some time next fall would be gapingly educational to an electorate weighing the merits of plunging into the Chavezian abyss. Fred would look supremely presidential, and Hillary would look....well, like the uberbitch she is.

Would that be enough to keep the Nightmare from coming true? That would depend on how much of the electorate (1) was persuadable and (2) actually cast a ballot. And, of course, how extensive the Donk election-rigging operation is. But I think it's safe to say that Ready Freddie is the last, best hope of keeping America's last days from commencing.

Yet, as I consult the latest Rasmussen national tracking poll, I see that Senator Thompson is languishing seventeen points behind America's Mayor, and even further behind the Mittster in Iowa and New Hampshire.

When it comes down to where the cheese binds, THAT is why Hillary is going to win.

Pity my family and I will be shipped off to the Alaska gulag before I can finish saying, "I told you so."

UPDATE: Did I call it, or did I call it?
Republican Mitt Romney has delighted in his attacks on Hillary Rodham Clinton, questioning the Democratic presidential contender's experience by labeling her an "intern" and saying "she has never run a corner store."

The Clinton camp is fighting back with a singular rebuttal that harkens back to the GOP's devastating attacks on Democrat John Kerry in 2004. It's also sure to echo into next year should Romney emerge as his party's presidential nominee.

"Hillary Clinton needs no lessons on character from a man who switches his positions on a daily basis," said campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson.

Phil Singer, another Clinton spokesman, said after Romney focused on immigration a week ago: "Considering how often he flip-flops, we wouldn't be surprised if Governor Romney later decides he's for sanctuary cities _ again."
This from the woman who changed her position on drivers licenses for illegal aliens four times in the space of three minutes and twelve seconds not two weeks ago, then switched again a day later, and just forty-eight hours ago flip-flopped a sixth time.

But she'll NEVER be called on it, while the Clinton Machine will turn Romney into the Republican John Kerry. And Hugh Hewitt calls Romney the "strongest candidate against Hillary".

Gonna be a long campaign. Hope you're all pacing yourselves - and neutralizing your gag reflex. Take it from one who knows - too much vomiting is not healthy.