Why Conservatives Love Hillary Clinton

Posted by Bill Dupray on Nov 19 2008 Filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

Noemie Emery at the Weekly Standard has an article that traces Hillary’s transformation from a Liberal standard bearer who was outflanked on the left by a young, glittering, black Hollywood star. Instead of trying to run to his left, Emery observes that Clinton seemed to peel back the Ivy League feminist veneer and revert to her no-nonsense Midwestern roots, defending traditional American blue-collar working folks and their values.

In this incarnation, she began to attack Obama for his lack of war-on-terror credentials, noting that she and John McCain had years of experience dealing with war-and-peace issues, while Obama had speeches. She ran ads implying Obama was not the right person to answer the phone when it rang in the White House at three in the morning with news of a terrorist outrage. She didn’t just change, she seemed authentic in changing, as if a woman who had gone through multiple makeovers during decades in politics had finally found a persona that fit her. Martha’s Vineyard flaked off, revealing the soul of a Midwestern scrapper. Conservatives watched, with surprise, with some awe, and with some bemusement. Perhaps this was her all along.

In the spring, conservatives found themselves pulling for Clinton, in the interests of keeping the Democratic feud going. But as time passed and she refused to dissolve in the face of adversity, a strategic alliance based on convenience became infused with a Strange New Respect. How tough she was. How relentlessly viable. How she resisted the pressure of Obama obsessives, who were trying to show her the door. And how right she was, at least from their viewpoint, and at least upon foreign affairs.

Our PUMA friends will recognize this observation.

This shift in the Hillary Clinton persona did not go unobserved on the left, which commenced to tear her apart in the same terms of endearment it would later unleash upon Sarah Palin, and had used before on George W. Bush and Joe Lieberman. Moveon.org, founded ten years ago by liberal Democrats to defend the Clintons against impeachment proceedings, now assailed her with the savage ferocity they had once reserved for Ken Starr. As a result, perhaps, Hillary later refused to attack Sarah Palin, and treated her, and McCain, with personal courtesy throughout the campaign.

When Hillary coupled her defense of regular, blue-collar Americans with pragmatic, hawkish positions on Iran (at one point she basically said she’d turn the place into a parking lot if they hit Israel) and in foreign policy generally (no unconditional meetings with dictators and thugs), she came more to the right, and even to the point, gasp, that conservatives actually hope she becomes Secretary of State.

As for the conservatives, many of those who began 2008 willing to do anything to defeat her tended to end it feeling sorry she lost. They began to tell themselves and each other they would sleep better at night if she were the nominee of her party, for reasons having to do with the now-famous three a.m. phone call. She would not, they said, have gone to Berlin and said that the city was saved by the world coming together; she would have known that the Air Force had something to do with it. As thoughts turned later on to possible cabinet picks, the thought of Hugo Chavez and Vladimir Putin staring into the clueless eyes of John Kerry and/or Bill Richardson roused still more anxiety. Better the steely gimlet-eyed stare of a Hillary Clinton. They feared Iran now, not the former First Lady. The days when they feared her now seemed far away.

On domestic issues such as taxes, spending, judges, etc., Hillary Clinton and conservatives remain miles apart. But if it were my call to choose the next Secretary of State, there would be no question.

It would be Hillary Clinton.

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