Free Republic

Pay no attention to that woman behind the curtain. Be afraid. Be very afraid, for if you don’t obey the Great and Powerful Oz will turn her wrath on you. Yawn. Hillary Clinton’s favorite girlhood movie was the “Wizard of Oz.” But now, as the primaries clank along, her subjects are refusing to wear the green-tinted glasses and buy her act. She’s less and less terrifying every day, and fewer of those closest to her -- her Senate colleagues -- are intimidated. Despite their best efforts, the Clintons' powers seem to have gone on the fritz, and those Democrats who...

What is it about Democratic politicians and their irresistible urge to lie? Even in the post-President Clinton era, lies continue to flow from the lips of prominent Democrats with regularity only matched by lots of fiber. Within the past two weeks alone, we’ve seen Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his former Chief of Staff, Christine Beatty, surrender to authorities after being indicted for conspiracy, perjury and obstruction of justice. Hillary Clinton said she was “sleep-deprived, and I misspoke” when she highly exaggerated about her trip to Bosnia as First Lady 12 years ago, and claimed she was under hostile sniper...

Sen. John McCain’s "Straight Talk Express'' will roll out for a nostalgia tour this week, a bus-storming tour of many of the touchstones in the senator’s long life. Yet, for the two Democrats still battling over their party’s presidential nomination, this will be a season to forget – if they can. *snip* How much will it matter this fall, should Obama claim the Democratic nomination, that he devoted two decades to a church whose pastor spoke of damning America for its racial practices? *snip* How much will it matter, should all or half of the delegations of Florida and Michigan...

Faced with a growing chorus to abandon the uphill battle against Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton is falling back on what she sees as her trump card - her gender.At other perilous junctures like the eve of the New Hampshire primary and the eve of Super Tuesday, the former First Lady highlighted her femininity during televised tearful moments. Now she is portraying the calls for her to quit as male chauvinism. In comments leaked to the New York Times, Mrs Clinton is said to have told aides that she would not be "bullied out" of the White...

...Which brings us back to our question: Why would so smart a candidate play political Russian roulette with virtually all the bullet chambers loaded? Sometimes only a shrink can decipher why some politicians persist in flagrantly taking giant risks, all but daring others to catch them in the act (see: Spitzer, Eliot). Carl Bernstein, a sometimes admiring Hillary Clinton biographer, has called the Bosnia debacle “a watershed event” for her campaign because it revives her long history of balancing good works with “ ‘misstatements’ and elisions,” from the health-care task force fiasco onward. But this event may be a watershed...

A golden rule in the game of American (or any modern professional) politics is that if you are behind in a campaign and you’re running out of time, you “go negative”. Twenty years ago I actually took a class in professional campaign tactics at Harvard University’s John F Kennedy School of Government. We examined case studies of campaigns in recent years and saw the very precise metrics that the professionals use to gauge how much you lose if you throw mud at someone – because you look like a sleazebag – compared with how much damage you can inflict. The...

For all their delight in soaring voter registration and strong poll numbers, some Democrats fear the contest between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton might have a nightmarish end, which could wreck a promising election year. The chief worry is that Clinton may carry her recent winning streak into Pennsylvania, Indiana, North Carolina and other states, leaving her with unquestioned momentum but fewer pledged delegates than Obama. Party leaders then would face a wrenching choice: Steer the nomination to a fading Obama, even as signs suggested Clinton could be the stronger candidate in November; or go with the surging...

Now that Obama and Hillary are offering images that are much weaker, LESS HONEST, and less solid and dependable, good old John McCain looks much better as he tours Iraq and Israel while Democrats rip one another apart.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean yesterday admonished Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama to stop attacking one another because it's demoralizing the party's base and damaging its chances of winning back the White House in November. Lecturing the two rivals for escalating campaign attacks that he said have gotten too personal, and bluntly telling their supporters to "keep their mouths shut," Mr. Dean warned that the party's convention this summer could get "really ugly and nasty" if their bitter battle for the nomination is not settled soon. Mr. Dean called on the 350 unpledged superdelegates, who will likely...

It is amazing how loud some of the buzz is for Sen. Hillary Clinton to "do what's best for the party" and get out. More than any other week, this one seemed to have the most actual calls for a Clinton withdrawal. It started last Friday with Bill Richardson. It has continued throughout the past seven days with calls from both Sen. Barack Obama supporters (Chris Dodd and Pat Leahy) to supposed uncommitted Dem bigwigs (Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi).

Hillary Clinton distances herself from adviser who branded Lord David Trimble a 'crankpot' By Toby Harnden in Washington Last Updated: 2:41am GMT 28/03/2008 Hillary Clinton's campaign has disowned a senior adviser who branded Lord Trimble, former Northern Ireland First Minister, a sexist "crankpot" whose views were suspect because he was a Protestant. Under fire: Hillary and Chelsea Clinton are greeted by a smiling eight-year-old Bosnian girl in 1996 "It is not the campaign's policy to attack leaders from other countries," said Howard Wolfson, Mrs Clinton's communications director. Jamie Rubin, a former assistant secretary of state in Bill Clinton's administration, lashed...

BREAKING: Dean wants closure by July 1 A potential game-changer from CBS News and "The Early Show." Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean says he wants superdelegates to make a decision by JULY 1 -- the most specific he has been in his effort to prod the party to decide between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton before the Democratic National Convention in late August. Harry Smith asked if after the nominating contests end with the South Dakota and Montana primaries on June 3, "Do you want the superdelegates to have some sort of vote immediately so that you'll know months...

Accused Saddam Agent Says He Met With Hillary at White House By IRA STOLL, STAFF REPORTER OF THE SUN | March 27, 2008 A Michigan man facing federal criminal charges of illegally working for Saddam Hussein's Iraqi Intelligence Service says he met with Hillary Clinton at the White House in May 1996. In a 1997 interview with this reporter, Muthanna Hanooti said that at the meeting, Mrs. Clinton was "very receptive" to his request for an easing of the American sanctions on Iraq that were in place at the time. He said Mrs. Clinton "passed a message to the State...

Lessons in Disillusion with the Political Class by Ross Mackenzie Thursday, March 27, 2008 There may be more to the Barack Obama/Jeremiah Wright story than the disconnect between what the two have been saying. Far more than an Obama in the 20-year embrace of a conspiracy theorist and black supremacist, presenting himself as a racial transcender. In a 2006 sermon at Howard University, Wright said: “Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run. No black man will ever be considered for president . . . and no black woman can ever be considered for...

Hillary Clinton has a solu tion to her Tuzla problem - let's talk about Rev. Je remiah Wright some more. On the day after the CBS News aired video making a hash of Sen. Clinton's claim to have landed "under sniper fire" in Tuzla, Bosnia in 1996, she raised for the first time the issue of Barack Obama's relationship to Rev. Wright. In this, she followed a Clinton family pattern so well-established it's almost boring: Misrepresent the truth as convenient - then, when caught, go on the offensive.

*** Next she'll say that she was threatened by Bosnian snipers disguised as little girls hiding Uzis in the flowers...... NAMES REDACTED Ozone Park *** The master of deceit, Bill Clinton, and his sidekick, Hillary. "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" still rings in my ears. Lavallette, NJ ***What a sick lie. I'm sorry I ever voted for the Clintons and did so twice. If she gets the nod by conniving, I'll be voting for Sen. John McCain. Surfside Beach, NC *** I don't see how anyone can support Clinton now that she has been caught with...

WASHINGTON -- As the Clintons enter their 17th year at the center of the national stage, some Washington pundits are running out of patience with them. My condition is more desperate. I am running out of jokes about these two perennial college kids. History eventually will remember them as the reincarnation of Warren and Florence Harding. For now, they come off as two undergraduate BSers on a protracted spring break. Hillary BSes about her indispensability to the first Clinton administration. Bill agrees with her and BSes about everything under the sun. At the beginning of their delightful presidential campaign, a...

Some Democratic Party leaders are growing more concerned that the protracted, caustic fight for the presidential nomination will cripple the eventual nominee, and there are new signs they have reason to worry. More party leaders are saying that the increasingly personal crossfire between the Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama campaigns serves only to write the script for Republican ads in the fall and to give John McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee, a head start in framing his candidacy. While the Democrats have been arguing almost daily the past two weeks about each other's electability and integrity, McCain has visited Iraq...

Last night, Greta van Susteren interviewed Hillary Clinton on Fox News. This was the most interesting exchange: VAN SUSTEREN: And if he says, no, I won't do it, that leaves Michigan and Florida out. And does that leave you out? CLINTON: No. Not at all, because we are going to make sure those votes get counted, one way or another. VAN SUSTEREN: How? CLINTON: Well, you know, you can always go to the convention. That is what credential fights are for. You know, let's have the Democratic Party go on record against seating the Michigan and Florida delegations three months...

You'll recall Hillary Clinton's recent speech in which she attempted to play up her foreign policy experience by recounting her "harrowing" 1996 trip to Bosnia. "I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base." Well, mainstream media has discounted that account, and such luminaries as comedian Sinbad have chimed in as well. It appears, however, that Clinton caved in too soon when she admitted overstating the dangers, as Barely Political...