Posted on 11/04/2005 3:47:15 PM PST by naturalman1975
IN New York in October, I saw a new bumper sticker that was a bit rude. "Put some real bush in the Oval Office," it said. "Elect Hillary in 2008." I rolled down the window of my taxi, to speak sternly to the driver about his vulgarity and to ask him where he got it. He said he was a Hillary supporter who was printing the stickers "because we want to get all the jokes out of the way early in the campaign".
Now, Hillary (that is, Hillary Clinton, who is a US senator from New York and the former first lady) has not said that she intends to run for president in 2008 but almost everybody thinks she will. She's far too ambitious not to give it a shot; she also seems to believe that she has a lot to offer the American people.
So far, much of the debate surrounding Clinton's possible candidacy has focused on the fact she's a woman. Sceptics make the point that there have been 43 presidents of the US and all have been white, Christian men.
That doesn't mean a woman could never win; it only means a woman hasn't done it yet. Still, Clinton's supporters seem to think her sex is an issue, so they have started a campaign to make the idea of a female president more palatable.
They were delighted when the ABC (that's the American Broadcasting Corporation) launched a new, big-budget series in September to rival The West Wing. It's called Commander in Chief and it stars Geena Davis as the first female president of the US.
Davis, a mother of twins and an Oscar winner in real life, doesn't get elected to the White House in Commander in Chief. She starts out as the vice-president who gets promoted to the top job when the "real" president has a brain aneurysm.
The writers of the program gave Davis's character a nice, gender-neutral name (Mackenzie Allen, known as Mac).
They also made her a mother because it seems they didn't think the audience would warm to a single, childless woman as leader (just as some commentators in Australia don't think voters will warm to Labor's Julia Gillard because she's not married and has no children).
Clinton's supporters have told the US media that they hope the program will help voters get accustomed to the idea of a female president.
Bob Kunst, of hillarynow.com (a website devoted to her future candidacy), told The Village Voice in New York: "Hillary must have friends at ABC. This [the timing of the program, three years before the next election] is just too much of a coincidence."
And actually, that's right, Clinton does have friends on the show. As the Voice subsequently revealed, one of the writers, Steve Cohen, used to work for her in the 1990s, serving as the then first lady's deputy communications director.
The success of the show prompted pollsters to run some surveys on whether US voters would be willing to back a woman for president. One survey produced very interesting results. It said that if Hillary Clinton were running against George W. Bush right now, she would do no worse than John Kerry did in 2004.
In other words, she'd lose.
But the survey went further. It also asked voters whether they would back Elizabeth Dole, who is a conservative senator, also rumoured to be interested in one day running for president. The result suggested Dole could run against Kerry just as strongly as Bush did (in other words, she would win).
These surveys were interpreted to mean that US voters wouldn't mind voting for a woman. The real message is quite different. What these polls show is that US voters don't mind voting for conservatives.
The same is true in Australia, where even a donkey could beat the Labor Party federally, provided it was a conservative donkey; and, more recently, in Germany, when the fiercely conservative, pro-Bush Angela Merkel recently became the first female chancellor. Clinton's problem isn't that she's a woman, it's that she's a woman on the wrong side of politics; a woman whose party no longer has any good, strong ideas; a woman who is seen as being too closely associated with a limp ideology.
If she wants to get elected, she will have to prove that she is forceful, decisive and fearless (all qualities traditionally associated with men, but found in good measure in most mothers.)
Clinton understands this which is why, as a senator, she has joined the Senate armed services committee and why she supported the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and has never wavered.
It is true that she supports abortion, but that's not automatically the end of her campaign. Her husband, Bill, once said abortion should be "safe, legal and rare" and he twice got elected.
Bill is a liability, however. Being conservative (and mostly Christian), US voters don't generally like adulterers, but he has apologised to man and God, so that may be OK.
Voters didn't like Kerry because they thought he wasn't even wearing the pants in his own marriage (to billionaire Teresa Heinz Kerry). Hillary Clinton has no such problem.
For example, in a recent edition of the men's magazine Radar, readers were asked to guess which Clinton made the following comments.
"A decorator friend from Arkansas helped us with a new, brighter look [for the White House]: gold curtains in blue trim, gold high-back chairs and a beautiful deep blue rug, mirroring the one on the ceiling overhead."
That was Bill.
And what about this: "Before I got married, I was afraid that I'd spend my whole life alone."
That was also Bill.
If Hillary were running for President my vote would definately never be for her.
Some days I think she has a slim shot at The Presidency, but both parties are hardly short of white, Christian males and you know, right or wrong, that's where the smart money still lies.
I predict it'll be another decade or so before a female President is taken even remotely seriously, no matter how hard ABC tries to make it palatable today with a make-believe TV show. *Rolleyes* And by then this hag will be much too old and will probably be in Federal Prison for her numerous Crimes Against Humanity. *Fingers Crossed*
She doesn't scare me.
Commander in Chief
That show is terrible. It will, IMO, do more to keep a woman from becoming President.
He said he was a Hillary supporter who was printing the stickers "because we want to get all the jokes out of the way early in the campaign".
Not possible.
I think their polling method underrepresented the deceased voter category.
I'll willingly take 4 years of Hilary than I would 4 years of McCain.
If Hillary gets elected CIC wont mean Commander in Chief any longer. It will rhyme with runt in Chief.
How is it, that this monumental non-achiever(so utterly incompetent), could even be considered for the presidency and have the worship of so many?
Again-- The message is sublimal, yet unmistakeable. It is conveyed through the eyes--"vote for me and I will avenge". And all the man hating women, the bullied husbands, the dreary malcontents of America, will find temporary relief in thinking that she will somehow relieve their undefined anger, and bring about a life.
Pathetic!
The ONLY people that think she's great are the people of N.Y. and her aides....
The rest of America know the slime that she is....
No, only 42...Grover Cleveland (#22) and Grover Cleveland (#24) were the same person.
Check back with me as we get closer to '08 and we'll see. I think you're freakin' yourself out for no reason.
She. Is. Not. Electable. It just ain't gonna happen, no matter how many of these articles the MSM crams down our throats between now and then.
And we have PLENTY of Republican Governors (And a few Ex-Governors; Tommy Thompson) that would be great candidates come '08. Almost all modern-day Presidents were Governors, usually southerners. There hasn't ever been a Senator elected to the Presidency, has there? If so, only one or two...maybe a Jefferson or a Lincoln; too lazy to look it up right now. She's hardly all that, LOL!
I really didn't know who George W. Bush was, other than he was the Governor of Texas, prior to him starting his bid for the White House, and while I don't agree with him on everything, the choices on the left were ridiculous to say the least. Gore? Kerry? ROFLMAO! Can you name one Democrat who has no baggage or scandal behind them, or isn't a total "Legend in Their Own Mind" and feels that the Presidency is their "Birthright?" Or demonstrated even the least little bit of Leadership, unless when they're already preaching to the choir in some sort of "staged" gathering?
Don't worry. All will be well. Just work on getting every worthless Dem out of office that you can on your local level between now and then. Don't allow yourself to feel helpless. Who the h#ll is she to be pushing you around? She's no more than a Boogeyman under your bed; gone when you turn on the Light of Truth! Get out there and make a difference!
THAT is my mission to you between now and '08, should you choose to accept it. :)
It is going to be up to us to make sure that America never forgets Hillary's pronouncement in 2004, that she'll have to take some things away from us for the common good. The RNC needs to run endless loops of that statement, with revolving portraits of her heroes, Lenin, Stalin, Castro, Mao and Kim Jong Il.
Yep. There's a bottomless well of cr@p to use against her, that's for sure. Her husband is her biggest liability. Look for him to be dead before '08. What? You thought Bill arranged all those "Arkancides?" LOL! He already looks as if she's been having his food spiked with anti-freeze.
As I said, I am not afraid of her. She's the last person that's going to have any control over MY destiny. ;)
not sure if this is the right place but I ave a way in which a third party candidate could win if teh race seemed to be Condi and Hillary
Hillary chooses representitive Corrine Brown D FL for her Veep in order to cement the Black vote and the south
Condi chooses George Voynovich R (sorry, I don't know where from)to get the whites, metrosexuals, and the pacifist moderates
while this is an insult to the intelligence of both to think they take this course of action, it would cause a third party candidate to win by a landslide
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.