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The Billary Section is opened up by Corner posts from VDH and Lisa Shiffren.
VDH: … If anything, Clinton, in single-handed fashion, has exposed the facade of the modern liberal two-step: with worry in South Carolina that African-American firsters might outnumber feminist tribalists, suddenly he is complaining that people might actually vote their identity politics long encouraged to do so by the Left. Suddenly liberals are waking up from their 20-year slumber and blurting out that the shameless Clintons ‘will say and do anything…’. Suddenly there is anger that ex-Clintonites are embedded, as quasi sleeper cells, throughout the mainstream media and can hardly be fair to his (now Democratic) rival Obama. Bill Clinton accomplished that and more, and in very little time. …
Shiffren: … Every awful thing cited by Victor about the Clintons’ behavior as they grab for the presidential term they believe that God and nature and the rest of us owe Hillary, is, of course, correct. But, to my right-wing feminist mind (if such a thing does not self-destruct of its own internal contradictions) the absolute worst precedent that Hillary is setting comes in campaigning while leaning heavily on her husband’s arm for support. She is leaning so hard now, that we understand that were he to take a vow of silence until November, and cease bolstering her, she would probably fall on her face. …
Three posts from the Captain.
Earlier this morning, I noted that some Democrats have discovered that the Clintonian Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy meme may actually have been drizzly pap. In the Los Angeles Times today, Jonathan Chait reluctantly comes to that conclusion. He writes that the conservatives who have long railed against the lies and dirty tactics of the Clintons have been somewhat vindicated by the primary campaign tactics of Bill and Hillary:
Going into the campaign, most of us liked Hillary Clinton just fine, but the fact that tens of millions of Americans are seized with irrational loathing for her suggested that she might not be a good Democratic nominee. But now that loathing seems a lot less irrational. We’re not frothing Clinton haters like … well, name pretty much any conservative. We just really wish they’d go away.
The big turning point seems to be this week, when the Clintons slammed Obama for acknowledging that Ronald Reagan changed the country. Everyone knows Reagan changed the country. Bill and Hillary have said he changed the country. But they falsely claimed that Obama praised Reagan’s ideas, saying he was a better president than Clinton — something he didn’t say and surely does not believe.
This might have been the most egregious case, but it wasn’t the first. Before the New Hampshire primaries, Clinton supporters e-mailed pro-choice voters claiming that Obama was suspect on abortion rights because he had voted “present” instead of “no” on some votes. (In fact, the president of the Illinois chapter of Planned Parenthood said she had coordinated strategy with Obama and wanted him to vote “present.”) Recently, there have been waves of robocalls in South Carolina repeatedly attacking “Barack Hussein Obama.” …
Bill Clinton gives Jeff Jacoby the delicious opportunity to say I told you so.
ON THE day a new president is inaugurated, the outgoing president traditionally keeps a low profile, slipping away quietly after the swearing-in and leaving the spotlight to his successor. Not Bill Clinton. His first order of post-presidential business on Jan. 20, 2001, was a 90-minute rally at Andrews Air Force Base, complete with honor guard and a 21-gun salute.
“I left the White House, but I’m still here!” Clinton told the crowd. “We’re not going anywhere!”
Like most Americans, I was ready for the tawdry psychodrama that was the Clinton administration to be over. But something told me he wasn’t being rhetorical.
“He means it,” I wrote at the time. “He isn’t going anywhere. Yes, he packed his bags, zipped his pants, and turned the White House keys over to the new tenants – but he’s still here. There are more grotesqueries to come from our ex-president. There will be more truth-twisting, more money-grubbing, more scandal. Even out of office, he will find seamy new ways to degrade the presidency. Just wait.” …
James Kirchick in the Spine notes one wag’s idea about Hillary. It reprises one of the bumper stickers from the Louisiana campaign of Edwin Edwards v. David Duke – “Vote For The Crook, It’s Important!”
… Translated into real English: everybody knows that Bill and Hillary are truly dishonorable. There can be no surprises. Everything can be taken in stride. Hillary for president.
Frank Rich closes the Billary section with his road-map for GOP victory.
… The new year’s twin resurrections of Bill Clinton and John McCain, should they not evaporate, at last give the G.O.P. a highly plausible route to victory.
Amazingly, neither party seems to fully recognize the contours of the road map. In the Democrats’ case, the full-throttle emergence of Billary, the joint Clinton candidacy, is measured mainly within the narrow confines of the short-term horse race: Do Bill Clinton’s red-faced eruptions and fact-challenged rants enhance or diminish his wife as a woman and a candidate?
Absent from this debate is any sober recognition that a Hillary Clinton nomination, if it happens, will send the Democrats into the general election with a new and huge peril that may well dwarf the current wars over race, gender and who said what about Ronald Reagan. …
… If Mr. Obama has not met an unexpected Waterloo in South Carolina — this column went to press before Saturday’s vote — the party needs him to stop whining about the Clintons’ attacks, regain his wit and return to playing offense. Unlike Mrs. Clinton, he 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.
If Mr. Obama doesn’t fight, no one else will. Few national Democratic leaders have the courage to stand up to the Clintons. Even in defeat, Mr. Obama may at least help wake up a party slipping into denial. Any Democrat who seriously thinks that Bill will fade away if Hillary wins the nomination — let alone that the Clintons will escape being fully vetted — is a Democrat who, as the man said, believes in fairy tales.
Borowitz says the campaign has sent Bill to Antarctica.
Charles Krauthammer has John Edwards opinions.
… Edwards has made much of his renunciation of his Iraq war vote. But he has not stopped there. His entire campaign has been an orgy of regret and renunciation:
As senator, he voted in 2001 for a bankruptcy bill that he now denounces.
As senator, he voted for storing nuclear waste in Nevada‘s Yucca Mountain. Twice. He is now fiercely opposed.
As senator, he voted for the Bush-Kennedy No Child Left Behind education reform. He now campaigns against it, promising to have it “radically overhauled.”
As senator, he voted for the Patriot Act, calling it “a good bill . . . and I am pleased to support it.” He now attacks it.
As senator, he voted to give China normalized trade relations. Need I say? He now campaigns against liberalized trade with China as a sellout of the middle class to the great multinational agents of greed, etc.
Breathtaking. People can change their minds about something. But everything? The man served one term in the Senate. He left not a single substantial piece of legislation to his name, only an endless string of votes on trade, education, civil liberties, energy, bankruptcy and, of course, war that now he not only renounces but inveighs against. …
James Taranto posts on Kucinich, the slimy Detroit mayor, and the lib campaign against W.
… So why is Americans United for Change (running a campaign against Bush) like this? Robert Hahn of RedState.org has an intriguing explanation:
Maybe it’s a McCain-Feingold idea. George Bush is not a candidate for any federal office. This means that “Americans United for Change” can spend infinite money trashing him, and they don’t even have to report their donors to the [Federal Election Commission]. What’s more, there is inevitably going to be a certain, erm, latitude concerning what constitutes criticism of Bush and what constitutes criticism of Republican policies in general.
It’s an intriguing theory: McCain-Feingold, by strictly policing political speech about the future, creates an incentive to dwell on the past.
Samizdata noticed the same push against Bush.
… I read somewhere recently (and cannot find it right now) about a liberal group who are raising money to attack George Bush through the entire campaign season. This seems silly until you realize that he is a proxy for the Republican Party. …
… The bottom line? John McCain is not only a totalitarian: he’s a moron as well.
Redwood trees in the way of environmental progress?
Remember the stunningly stupid Paul Ehrlich? According to Division of Labour it was 40 years ago he wrote “Population Bomb” saying we were heading towards mass starvation.
Here’s an article about Ehrlich from an Australian paper, The Age.
… It’s easy to predict environmental collapse, but it never actually seems to happen.
The anniversary of The Population Bomb should put contemporary apocalyptic predictions in their proper context. If anything, our world — and the environment — just keeps getting better.
Ehrlich was at the forefront of a wave of pessimistic doomsayers in the late 1960s and early ’70s. And these doomsayers weren’t just cranks — or, if they were cranks, they were cranks with university tenure.
Despite what should be a humiliating failure for his theory of overpopulation, Ehrlich is still employed as a professor of population studies by Stanford University. Similarly, when George Wald predicted in a 1970 speech that civilisation was likely to end within 15 or 30 years, his audience was reminded that he was a Nobel Prize-winning biologist. …
Britain’s National Health Service is sneaking up to refusing treatment for those who “lead unhealthy lives.”
… Gordon Brown promised this month that a new NHS constitution would set out people’s “responsibilities” as well as their rights, a move interpreted as meaning restricÂtions on patients who bring health problems on themselves. The only sanction threatened so far, however, is to send patients to the bottom of the waiting list if they miss appointments. …