Andrew Sullivan and William Safire add their weight to the Hillary! bandwagon. The InstaPundit was on this last week, and I will take a bow myself.
Let's start with Mr. Safire:
Senator Hillary Clinton, sweeping through the Sunday morning talk shows after her somewhat upstaged Thanksgiving visit to the war zones, startled her conservative detractors by emerging as a congenital hawk. (I used that adjective "congenital," in the sense of "habitual," in derogation of her credibility back when the world was young.)
A column that went unread (but not unnoticed), as he later noted, because it came out during a snowstorm. Odd parallel. He goes on to praise her hawkishness on Iraq, and wonders what it means:
Consider the political meaning of all this. Here is a Democrat who has no regrets for voting for the resolution empowering the president to invade Iraq; who insists repeatedly and resolutely that "failure is not an option"; who is ready to send in a substantially greater U.S. force to avert any such policy failure — and yet whose latest poll ratings show her to be the favorite of 43 percent of Democrats, three times the nomination support given front-runner Howard Dean.
What cooks? One reason is that Hillary stands aloof, hard to get, while all the others are slavering for support. Another could be that most Democrats don't yet realize she's a hard-liner at heart. A third is that her personal appeal to liberals (and apoplectic opposition from conservatives) overwhelms all Democrats' policy differences. A fourth — and don't noise this around — could be that she speaks for the silent majority of centrist Democrats who yearn for the Old Third Way without Mr. Clinton.
Well, he leaves out a choice nicely articulated by one of Andrew Sullivan's readers - she is as phony as a three dollar bill on this issue, and her supporters know it. Hillary! is that special Dem who can strike as many moderate poses as she likes without ever alienating her liberal base (or convincing me). Hmm, if I am going to link to the Sullivan piece, I suppose I should read it, and I see he makes the same point:
Hillary's enormous gift is that the left of the party adores her, almost regardless of what she says or does. She is so hated by the far right that the left adopts her as an ally almost reflexively. So she alone of most Democrats has the ability to campaign from the center, to pose with troops in photo-ops, to out-flank Bush on the right in the war on terror, without endangering her base.
Well. Messrs. Safire and Sullivan disappoint by not puzzling over the question of whether Ms. Clinton has some deeper strategy than simple positioning for 2008. Who for example, benefits by the covering fire she lays down as an Iraqi hawk unrepentant for her votes on the war, and in support of the $87 Billion reconstruction? Not John Kerry - whoever thought he would f*** up his own repentance so totally?
The Conventional Wisdom is that Dick Gephardt, unrepentant Iraqi hawk, is emerging as the Anybody But Dean choice of the Dem Establishment. And why not, Missouri is a border state, so Mr. Gephardt may lose the South with a grace and style that far surpasses anything Howard Dean could muster, thereby providing useful help down-ticket. Now we see Ms. Clinton backing the Gephardt position on the war. Very interesting.
MORE: And Gore comes out for Dean! A subtle stop-Dean ploy by the Dem Establishment - "Here, Howard, catch this sack of cement"? Or a simple, one angry populist supporting another?
It's never simple! Mickey sends us to TNR. I like this:
...what Gore gets out of an early Dean endorsement could be a claim to being heir to the Dean wing of the party--a claim that could pay dividends should Dean embarrass himself next year. Gore wasn't going to beat Hillary and the Clinton wing in 2008 without a wing of his own. Now he's got a shot at one.
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