Free Republic

In the immediate aftermath of the Supreme Court’s monumental decision to overturn Roe v Wade, conservative writer John Ellis took to the internet to make a provocative case: It was time for Hillary Clinton to make a(nother) political comeback. “Now is her moment,” he wrote. “The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade creates the opening for Hillary Clinton to get out of stealth mode and start down the path toward declaring her candidacy for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination.” Ellis’ argument is centered on the ideas that 1) President Joe Biden, who will be 82 shortly after the...

<p>NEW SCHOOL President and former US Sen. Bob Kerrey just couldn't help himself from applauding Barack Obama after endorsing Hillary Rodham Clinton in Iowa yesterday - until he gave a left-handed compliment that almost sounded like it was cooked up in Clinton's headquarters.</p>

Since he left office in 2001, former president Bill Clinton has been paid by InfoUSA, an Omaha, Nebraska company that has been identified as a key provider of specially designed databases that are sold to criminals who use the detailed information to defraud the unsuspecting elderly. Because Senate financial disclosure rules do not require Hillary Clinton to reveal exactly how much -- or for what -- the company has paid her husband over the past five years, we don’t know all the details. But we do know this: former presidents – especially Bill Clinton – don’t come cheap. And, just...

Bill Clinton’s connections, and his endless supply of chits, only begin to capture his singular role in his wife’s presidential candidacy, advisers and friends of the couple say. He is the master strategist behind the scenes; the consigliere to the head of “the family,” as some Clinton aides refer to her operation; and a fund-raising machine who is steadily pulling in $100,000 or more at receptions. So far, his roles have unfolded in private as he provides ideas to his wife and makes sure she paces herself, and as he acts as something of a field general with donors, instructing...

Elections abroad featuring female candidates, including this week's contest in France, don't answer the question of how open Americans are to electing their first woman president. But they do offer this hint: Voters have become more receptive to females who project gender-bending strength and substance, as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton tries to do, and more likely to reject those who don't. Socialist Ségolène Royal lost her bid to be France's first female president after a campaign in which she played up her motherhood and underplayed policy details, while conservative winner Nicolas Sarkozy emphasized a hard-line platform against crime and immigration....

There was a time when advisers to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) looked abroad for proof that women can get elected to a top leadership role in the modern world: Margaret Thatcher, the former British prime minister; Angela Merkel, the German chancellor; and Michelle Bachelet, the president of Chile. But as presidential candidate Ségolène Royal was defeated by a conservative man who had been France's chief law enforcement officer, the Clinton campaign was quick to dismiss comparisons between their candidate and her Socialist counterpart across the Atlantic. "Other than the fact that they are both women, they don't have much...

How does a macho conservative politician run against a Socialist feminist who has pegged much of her campaign to the gender issue? Very carefully if you are Nicolas Sarkozy and you are in the final week of a French presidential campaign that is yours to lose. The tone of the campaign has sharpened and become more personal in the past two days. But even when he criticizes Segolene Royal, Sarkozy is careful to express his "respect" for her "as a person and a leader." He predicts her programs will bankrupt France, but he explicitly rejects any intention to patronize her....

THERE ARE TWO THINGS to be said about the first major intramural spat of the 2008 Democratic primary season. The first is that David Geffen has a point (and we're not saying that just because there is a remote chance that we might work for him someday). The second is that if California moves up its primary, presidential candidates visiting here will soon have to pander to more than just Hollywood moguls. Geffen, once among Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton's biggest financial backers, threw Hollywood's first mega-fundraiser of the election cycle on Tuesday — for Barack Obama. His criticism of...

SORRY seems to be the hardest word for Hillary Clinton. The New York senator is not used to being challenged on either her policy positions or her votes - especially when it comes to Iraq. For the last six years, she's operated in a protective bubble - insulated from the press and the voters. Those days are over. -snip-But her refusal to apologize is typical of two other characteristics that so frequently land her in trouble: her stubbornness and belief that she is always right. We've seen this before. -snip- That's a key reason why she shouldn't be president.

DAVENPORT, Iowa, Jan. 28 — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton was in a Cedar Rapids living room crammed with Iowa voters on Saturday night when a voice from the back asked why the Clintons were such polarizing figures in American politics. The room grew still, except for the crackle of the fireplace. “I could give you a flip answer that, you know, some people are going to like me, and some people are not,” Mrs. Clinton said, smiling and sipping from a cup of water. “But I think it’s bigger and deeper than that.” For the next few minutes, Mrs. Clinton...

Crowd laughs at Hillary in Iowa "I have a lot of experience dealing with evil bad men." Crowd erupts in laughter.Laughing at her, not with her. http://www.foxnews.com/video2/player06.html?012807/012807_studiob_cameron&FNL&Campaigning%20in%20Iowa&acc&Politics&-1&News&224&&&exp

You can measure the scale of an American president’s troubles by the number of skutniks he deploys during his State of the Union address. Every year during his big set-piece speech to Congress, the president will digress from the main thrust of his remarks to offer fulsome praise to some member of the audience in the gallery. This person will have been carefully selected in advance by the president’s speechwriters as an exemplar of some virtue and placed there for the purpose. The television producers will have been alerted in advance so that at the right moment, as the president...

It was one of those in-the-shower brainstorms for pollster John Zogby: Let's see which past A-list president voters wish they could put in the Oval Office to fix the nation and which of the major 2008 presidential hopefuls best matches that pick. Drumroll, please. In order: Ronald Reagan, at 28 percent, FDR at 26 percent, JFK at 21 percent, Abraham Lincoln at 16 percent, and just 6 percent for George Washington. And who's viewed as most Reaganesque? Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. She also grabs the FDR and Washington mantle but falls far short of upstart Sen. Barack Obama for the...

http://foolishpleasurestudio.com/eyewool/slap_hillary.html

For a candidate who is portraying herself as the most hawkish of the Democrats — and who, at least to judge by Jeffrey Goldberg's dispatch in the latest New Yorker, is the most hawkish of the Democrats — Senator Clinton's reaction to President Bush's speech on Iraq was quite a disappointment. Mrs. Clinton came out against sending more troops, and her statement began with the words, "based on the president's speech." But based on Mrs. Clinton's statement, it doesn't sound like she even listened to the speech.

Dallas businessman Dick Collins and his rich Republican friends figure to have a lot of fun with their Web site bashing Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. The site, www.stophernow.com, is dedicated to "rescuing America from the radical ideas of Hillary Clinton." It features anti-Hillary cartoons, jokes and, coming soon, T-shirts and other clothing items. -snip- Unlike other potential 2008 candidates, Mrs. Clinton enters the race with a reputation as a divisive figure that may handicap her efforts to persuade voters she can bring the country together and end more than a decade of partisan acrimony.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has begun a calculated series of meetings with top New York Democratic officials to signal that she is likely to run for the presidency in 2008 and to ask for their support if she does, according to one state Democratic official who spoke with her and two others who have been briefed on her plans. Senator Clinton met last week with Charles B. Rangel, the dean of the New York Congressional delegation, in what her advisers said was an effort to meet with most New York Congressional Democrats by the end of this month to discuss...

She had only token opposition, but Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton still spent more on her re-election — upward of $30 million — than any other candidate for Senate this year. So where did all the money go? It helped Mrs. Clinton win a margin of victory of more than 30 points. It helped her build a new set of campaign contributors. And it allowed her to begin assembling the nuts and bolts needed to run a presidential campaign. But that was not all. Mrs. Clinton also bought more than $13,000 worth of flowers, mostly for fund-raising events and as thank-yous...

For right-wing conspiracy theorists, this is the belly of the beast—a dinner at the Four Seasons in New York for the 20th anniversary of Harvard's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. Portentous Ivy League professors, Upper East Side gazillionaires, Precambrian media pooh-bahs; Dan Rather and Al Franken and Paul Pelosi, spouse of the Speaker-elect. Almost all in attendance cheer the results of the midterms while bemoaning the demise of old media. Suddenly, shimmering over the tabletops, comes a vision of what was and might yet be again: in full plumage, arriving and departing separately per their...

If the press release out of the Democratic National Committee is any indication of the knots into which the Democrats would be tied by a presidential campaign by Mayor Giuliani, it is sure going to be an lively couple of years. The DNC's communications director, Karen Finney, a veteran of Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign, greeted the news that Mr. Giuliani had formed a presidential exploratory committee with a press release that must be read to be believed. "Giuliani Was A Registered Democrat For Much Of His Life," the release begins. Only in Washington could the Democratic National Committee issue a...