Junto Boys

HILLARY TRANSFORMED

I was flipping channels Saturday night and caught a minute or two of Hillary Clinton (she's like a horrible car wreck, you have to slow down and look, just to confirm how awful) making a speech on C-SPAN at a Democrat-Farmer-Labor party fundraiser -- Minnesota's version of (D).

It certainly played like a campaign speech. Main themes:

- She bemoaned the "radical right's consolidation of power" (a clever rephrasing of ABB)

- She advocated a "return to traditional values" ("traditional" meaning "consistent with what is taught in college sociology classes")

- She promised a return to a "fair and prosperous America" (which, if achieved, usurps any call to values) (see also, "It's the economy, stupid")

- She promoted "personal responsibility - especially where it counts the most, with our own children." I never did get what she was trying to say there, except that it was something she knows she has to say to get elected. She went on to discuss how she still believes "it takes a village to raise a child," (a statement she knows she cannot escape) and explained what she really meant by that in a way that wasn't what she really meant by that.

- "Poverty is creeping back up." "Children deserve access to medical care." "Jobs are no longer as plentiful or as rewarding." Somewhere in there she talked about moms taking their kids to soccer games and Little League - this from the woman who made the famously disdainful remark about women "staying home and baking cookies," another statement she knows she cannot escape and so must redefine.

- "While the Republicans play their power games, they're leaving America behind - and it's going to take you and me to get it back!! Thank you and God bless you!!"

Well that certainly sounds like a campaign speech to me, using the classic political maneuver of appropriating her opponent's positions. But can she pull it off? It's hard to believe a Clinton can stand behind a microphone and talk about traditional values, personal responsibility, and effective parenting, but if anybody can look into your eyes and confidently say what they do not believe, it's a Clinton.

I know one guy is happy: Dick Morris. He is making a whole career out of respinning the Clinton's spin.

I can only hope that by the time Hillary has someone to run against, he will have figured out how to thoroughly dismantle her. No doubt Karl is working on that today.