In today's column Rich takes a look at his paper's endorsements of Hillary Clinton and John McCain and wonders if this match up doesn't work to the GOP's advantage. As usual, I think he's absolutely right.
In a McCain vs. Billary race, the Democrats will sacrifice the most highly desired commodity by the entire electorate, change; the party will be mired in déjà 1990s all over again.
Yeah.
I don't want to go back to the 90's. There, I said it. As a liberal who came of age under Reagan and Bush 1, and who cast her first presidential vote for Walter Mondale, Bill Clinton was a wonderful breath of fresh air, and I liked almost everything about his presidency.
Sure, there were disappointments, the first of which for me was the "don't ask and don't tell" compromise with gays in the military. I'm neither gay nor military, but that just seemed like such an enormous cave on basic human rights. And NAFTA turned out not so good for us. Monica. I'm sure we could all list off a bunch of stuff. I don't mean to pile on the guy, I just want to step back for a minute and look with some perspective. But overall, I really enjoyed those 8 years, it seemed like we were moving forward.
Ironically, Hillary's breakthrough moment during the New Hampshire primary was when she was asked how does she do it, and she choked up and said that she just doesn't want us, America, to fall back, to go backward. It struck me as odd because surely neither Obama nor Edwards would take us backwards, so who was she talking about? I think she was talking about any of the GOP candidates, I think for her "change" is about which party is in office and nothing further. I am beginning to suspect that her world view is us versus them.
I do not want to watch the Clinton camp settle their scores with their old enemies for the next 4 or 8 years. I don't want to go down that old road. I want a new road. I want the change Obama is promising.
Frank Rich again says it best:
Unlike Mrs. Clinton, [Obama] would unambiguously represent change in a race with any Republican. If he vanquishes Billary, he’ll have an even stronger argument to take into battle against a warrior like Mr. McCain.
And another thing - Hillary said in a debate recently that if McCain gets the GOP nomination, then the general election will be about national security. That infuriated me. Why the hell should the weak-ass GOP nominee get to determine what the election's about? WTF? I don't dislike Hillary, I don't know her personally, we agree on paper on every single issue, but that statement speaks volumes to me about how her campaign is run on the defensive, or maybe the passive-aggressive. Either way, I don't like it.
Rant over.