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(s)Elections See other (s)Elections Articles Title: Hillary's New Conservative Friends Hillary's New Conservative Friends On a hot August night in the Astrodome 16 years ago, Pat Buchanan stood before the Republican National Convention and declared that America was in the throes of a religious and cultural war, with the opposition party pushing an “amoral” agenda of unregulated abortion, rampant homosexuality and unrestricted pornography. In particular, he singled out the “lawyer-spouse” of the Democratic presidential nominee, gravely warning that Hillary Clinton “believes that 12-year-olds should have the right to sue their parents, and she has compared marriage as an institution to slavery and life on an Indian reservation.” “Friends,” Buchanan continued, “this is radical feminism. The agenda Clinton and Clinton would impose on America—abortion on demand, a litmus test for the Supreme Court, homosexual rights, discrimination against religious schools, women in combat—is change…but it’s not the kind of change we can tolerate in a nation that we still call God’s country.” Roughly speaking, this is the caricature of Hillary Rodham Clinton—the angry radical feminist bent on destroying every last vestige of traditional American culture—that has prevailed among conservatives for the last decade-and-a-half. It’s why she registered the highest unfavorable ratings of any First Lady in history and why so much ink has been devoted to the question of whether she’s too polarizing to win the presidency. But something funny has happened as this year’s Democratic race has unfolded: Some of the same right-wing voices who once vilified her as the second coming of Hanoi Jane now seem to see Hillary Clinton as some new Frank Rizzo. Take Buchanan, who has taken to promoting her on an almost nightly basis on MSNBC as the salvation for working class, culturally conservative “Reagan Democrats,” an electable antidote to Barack Obama, whom Buchanan now skewers as the same kind of nutty leftist he once branded Hillary. On a recent broadcast, Buchanan emphatically sung Clinton’s praises for the appeal she has shown in states with heavy populations of working-class white ethnic voters—precisely the people at whom his 1992 convention speech was aimed. Then he spouted the Clinton campaign’s spin that, even though their candidate trails in popular votes and delegates and fares markedly worse against John McCain in numerous swing states, Hillary is nonetheless the superior fall candidate because only she can carry the white ethnic vote in states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan. “If he loses Pennsylvania by anything like the margin he lost Ohio,” Buchanan said of Obama, “Democratic superdelegates and Democrats everywhere are going to say, ‘Look, Reagan Democrats looked at him…They are recoiling and moving away. This guy can lose it all for us when we’ve got it won.’” He added: “The Democrats have to win the general election, and his vote—African-American, young, liberal professors—they're going to vote Democrat anyhow.” Others on the right are making the same case. A decade ago, The National Review’s Rich Lowry branded Hillary “a practitioner of the odious political style of the enlightened Baby Boomer.” But now, with Obama poised to win the Democratic nomination, Lowry is rushing to Clinton’s defense, praising her “a serious person, afflicted, as she put it once, with ‘a responsibility gene.’” Lowry then lionized Hillary for pressing on even though the cultural elite in her party—the same people that, according to the conservatives’ preferred narrative until recently, she supposedly represented—had abandoned her, leaving her with a coalition of “unglamorous voters who aren’t young or rich or independent, but working-class Democrats without the time or inclination to stand so long at Obama rallies that they faint in the middle of her speeches.” Or take Howie Carr, a vitriolic conservative radio host and Boston Herald columnist who spent much of the last 15 years portraying Hillary as the mortal enemy of Joe Six-Packs everywhere. “An ashtray-tossing shrew,” he dubbed her back when she was First Lady. Now? In his most recent column, he portrayed her as something of a champion of the common-sense, law-abiding working man, arguing that her supporters are “those who work with their hands” while Obama’s are “those who don’t work, period.” “Clinton voters,” he also wrote, “know who caused 9/11 - Arab terrorists. Obama voters know who caused 9/11—Halliburton.” At least Carr recognizes the irony of all of this. “Once,” he wrote, “it was the Clintons who were the insurgents, the draft-dodging, pot-smoking, partial birth abortion-backing Ivy League limousine libs. Now, compared to Barack Obama’s radical-chic comrades, Bill ’n’ Hill look like refugees from the local Tuesday-night candlepin-bowling league.” That is probably as good an explanation as any for the right’s sudden sympathy for Hillary Clinton. Sure, her style has changed through the years and she’s made a concerted effort in the Senate to moderate her image. But what has changed is that, for the first time ever, a young African-American has emerged as the likely Democratic presidential nominee. And, while the breadth and depth of Obama’s coalition should be sufficient to defy caricature, the popular image of his bandwagon has it overstuffed with idealistic and awe-struck college students and black voters. To reactionaries like Buchanan, it’s as if George McGovern and Malcolm X have joined forces. And just like that, the old feminist doesn’t look so bad to them.
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#1. To: aristeides (#0)
Pat is a talking head fraud. Anyone that takes him seriously needs to see a shrink. He stand s for nothing.
Article doesn't mention how it's also Limbaugh. I wonder how many other right- wing talkers are now spouting a pro-Hillary line.
It's not because they think she'll be a weak candidate, although she will be. It's because they genuinely endorse her warmongering. Warmongering is THE issue with the neocons. Otherwise we will all be living under the "caliphate." < /sarcasm> Meanwhile, Russia and China have quietly teamed up to take over most of the rest of the world while we obsess on Israel's enemies.
Warmongering may be THE issue with the neocons, but Buchanan ain't a neocon. In his case, I suspect the real reason is that Hillary, like McCain, in fact represents the powers that be: D.C. insiders and lobbyists, banks and big money, corporations. Those forces may not like some of the things Hillary and McCain have done in the past, but I suspect they find either of them infinitely preferable to Obama. Obama may himself have the support of Chicago money and some New York and California money, but he has shown his prowess at fundraising from average citizens over the Internet. He depends on big money much less than the other contenders. Which is a strong consideration in Obama's favor.
You're right. Pat just doesn't much care for black people, IMHO. He has a visceral reaction to them, which probably is a result of his having grown up in heavily black Washington, D.C. He should try to remember that Barack is half-Irish and so could be considered a fellow Celt. But he can't get beyond the facial features which emphasize the other half of his genetics.
Buchanan picked a black running mate in his 2000 Reform Party run for President, so I don't think race has anything to do with it. What it's all about is that under all of his bluster, PJB is a RNC tool who'll do what the party higher-ups tell him to. The GOP have decided that they'd rather have Hillary than Obama (Mad Mac is more likely to defeat Billary, and if Billary should win, she's more useful to the neocons), so like Limbaugh, PJB runs to her support. Just like he dropped just about all of his pet political views to support Bush Sr, Dole, and Bush Jr. after attacking them for months, he'll now find good things to say about McCain or even Hillary if his RNC masters tell him "back our candidate or you'll never appear on MSNBC or Fox again."
You could be right. The theory could have been tested if Colin Powell had ever run as a GOPer for the White House. My view is that Pat would STILL have been opposed to him no matter what the RNC told him to do or say, but we'll never know for sure since his candidacy never happened.
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