The focus of the Republicans’ attention

Not one of those asked — Romney, Giuliani, McCain — could explain why Clinton is beating them, and what they’d do to win. Hmm.

That’s because the only thing they know how to do is pound their chests and make neadrethal grunts about how that uppity woman doesn’t know her place and should be in the kitchen where she belongs. They can insult her intelligence for now, when she is not on the stage, but she – Yale Law, 2-time Am Law Top 100 Lawyers – is considerably brighter than most and perhaps all of them.

But the biggest strategic problem for the Rethugs with the increasingly shrill Hillary bashing can be explained to them by Mr. Lazio who discovered that when you look all over-macho in beating on a woman you greatly increase her support among women – including non-Democratic women.

It takes a scared person to live in their world! -Kevo

The Reskunklican gaggle needs to put the spotlight on Clinton, because to put the spotlight on Bush is to put the spotlight on themselves. None of them will change the core gameplan of the Bush administration—and given the bizarro-fringe lanks that Paul has wrapped around his head, it’s probably safe to say that the “GOP Peace Candidate” is blowing smoke up everyone’s backside with his “end-the-war” manifesto. It’s his “stunt” to try and edge past what has become mainstream neoconservativism, and the pathetic showing at the value-voters “thing-a-ma-jiggy” shows that—at least among social conservatives—Paul cannot make the cut. Conservatives may, indeed, be mad hatters, but they’re not going to go gah-gah over a shrill little howler monkey the likes of RP.

It’s also pretty much a foregone conclusion that the resounding “no” received by Mitt the Twit came from a stacked audience; the common tactic of the neoconservative these days. If you’re not “the right kind of conservative,” you don’t get in the door. The audience wasn’t selected to be—as the Rupertburghers like to quip—“fair and balanced;” they were “invited,” instead, to begin the annointing process for the Foxchurian Candidate.

That candidate, barring a sudden attack of Truth that will be plied by the batsh*t brigade as “a Dem dirty trick,” will be either Romney or Huckabee. None of the others will garner the prerequisite support, and the hot-air balloon that is Ghouliani will hit a chill wind in another month or two, when the Party Apparatus finally gets it through their thick little noggins that RooDee will cost them the Oval Office. The GOP cannot win without their spear-slinging, knuckledragging ‘Vangees out on front. Romney, one might think, would be the easier of the two to take down. He cannot raise money, so he injects millions from his own fortune. He was a “copycat Dem” (doing pretty much everything that a Dem would do) before he wanted to become president. So Romney can be peddled as someone who’s trying to buy his way into the Presidency, and as someone who was a bright-n-shiny closet Dem before he realized that he had to play to a different audience.

Hillary’s not my choice for the job—I’m a Kucinich maniac from way, way back—but she’s the same Hillary as she was several years ago. We cannot say the same thing about Mitt the Twit—and the social conservatives’ “slow coalescence” around Romney may be a strong indication that they are vetting his candidacy before rallying to it….

And is it just me, or does the newsmax ad on the left make my point about Hillary being the one they love to hate? Look at that picture. It says “I’m a mean bitch and I’m going to tax your ass and give the money to the illegal aliens”.

Do we really think they’re spending all that money to find out who we’ll vote for, or are they doing it to put her mug out there in the least flattering way possible so we’ll be turned off by her?

Hmm.

I tend to think that any Democrat with a clear lead in the primary races is going to be attacked by Republicans. Kind of comes with the territory. Attacking Democrats is what Republicans do. And frankly what else have they got to talk about, now that Rudy has ruined 9/11 for them (to the point that the Giuliani’s own campaign even started returning contribution in $9.11 and $911 denominations recently).

I watched one of the Republican debates. Aside from the usual boilerplate; terrorism, sanctity of life, marriage, Hillary sucks, 9/11. cut more taxes, the free market is the answer to health care, win in Iraq, etc, not one of the candidates had any actual plans and no new initiatives. No one even mentioned increasing the size of the military in the interest of prevailing in Iraq.

Apparently, things are going so well that nothing needs to be fixed. This was a bit strange because none of them would mention the name “Bush” even though he is seemingly the author of this benign state of affairs.

Either the fix is in or the Republicans are content to let a Democratic president reap what Bush has sown.

I really think there’s a third, practical option: they are convinced Hillary is going to be the Democratic candidate, that nothing will stop her, and it’s time to send out the attack dogs

I think so too. If Edwards were as far ahead as Clinton is now, they would be attacking him, using the trial-lawyer and swishy-haircut stuff. If Obama were way ahead we’d be hearing about his middle name and his K-12 madrassa education. Demonizing the Dem candidate will be 90% of the general election strategy, so they may as well start now.

If there’s a special anti-Clinton animus in the GOP, it’s because the Clintons beat them twice, not for any other reason. For those worried that Hillary is a polarizing figure, you should know that this is a feature not a bug. In modern smashmouth politics, you want to not just prevail, but also you want to wipe you enemies’ noses in their defeat. Beating them with Hillary does just that.

Let me start with the fact that I am not a Hillary fan, but it is not hard to see why she scares the hell out of the Republicans.

She was closely associated with an administration that most Americans now look back to with longing, after seven years of the incompetence of Bush.

For those afraid of voting for a woman, Hillary is easy to deal with by thinking of who her chief advisor will be – someone most of the people who might vote for her and still be afraid of the result see as being a far better president than Bush will ever be.

Thus, Hillary is a “known quantity” and voting for her is a far less radical act than would be voting for any other woman for President.

For the Republicans, she’s a known quantity who took the worst hits of the “vast right wing conspiracy” and came up a winner, moving from the White House to the Senate. Whether I like her or not – and my disagreements with her are over policy and I had the same disagreements with her husband – she has more competence in her little toe of her right foot than the entire Republican Party, combined.

Enough of the country is finally sick and tired of the right wing to the point where they are not going to win no matter what they do. In their heart of hears, they know it’s back to being chased home from school and being beaten up in the alley days again.

Dajafi, I’m not sure I see the “imperial” part of it (although I see more in HRC than in Bill). Indeed, one of the things I thought was so welcome in Bill Clinton over Bush 41 was the change from an “imperial presidency” to a much more human one. Bush seemed to believe the White Hosue was his birthright. He seemed surprised by a supermarket scanner and the price of milk, he was a Kennebunkport aristocrat who had no idea — nor the slightest care — how the “little people” lived. He was above that riff raff. And one consequence of that attitude was that Bush (a) felt he was above the law and (b) didn’t need to explain himself or even had a good reason – he said so, he was among the elite, ergo his word was law.

Bill Clinton may be as opposite of that as any President we’ve had – scupulously wonky, touchy-feely literally to a fault, worked (and still works) rope lines for hours – he digs the people, he digs the crowds, he has empathy and can therefore reflect concern (this also makes him the anti-Fred Thompson, he who notoriously hates campaigning.) Not only did he not seem to think it was his entitlement, he often seemed surprised to really be there. He may have actually been an overcorrection in some ways, but it was such a welcome change from 41 that I am not about to complain.

Paul wants to bring the army home and use it to seal up the borders. That would require changing the law and an expenditure of untold billions of dollars—both things that Paul votes against on a constant basis.

Paul wants to establish an internal security apparatus to maintain constant vigil in immigrants and visa-holders—and anyone they come in contact with inside those borders.

Paul promotes the creation of a national economic engine that can only be defined as “anarcho-capitalism.” I’m not willing to turn the economy over to the profiteer class; we’ve seen their handiwork in Iraq already. We saw their handiwork in the mad rush to econimize NASA that led to the loss of not just one orbiter—but TWO. We saw their expertise in levee maintenance for four years—and then came a lady by the name of Katrina.

Paul wants us to return to the gold standard—but fails to acknowledge that placing a nation’s currency on the gold standard would require that nation to regulate its own gold reserves in order to maintain the steadfastness of that currency—but Paul wants to eliminate the Federal Reserve and the Treasury.

Paul wants to curb imports as a means toward the end—being the reconstruction of America’s industrial base. That day is lo-ooong gone now; to attempt such a thing today would be the equivalent of teaching a child about healthy food choices—by starving that child. Corporations are angry enough at the Government for requiring reinvestment as a prerequisite to tax breaks. I do not see an anarcho-capitalist regime in this country willing to invest its fortunes to rebuild America’s industrial base. when the alternative is to continue raking it the obscene profits of Asian Rim labor. Contemplate, for a moment or three, how much it would cost to rebuild the American shoe industry. Then, the American textile industry. Followed by the American steel, tire, and electronics industries. Let’s not forget about the American toy industry. Paper. Ink. Plastics. Glass. Ceramics. Fuels. Transportation. Food.

Yep—food, JKap. I walked into a grocery store; picked up a can of peaches. National brand, too. Printed on the bottom of that can of peaches, in nice, blue letters, was the word “Thailand.” Same thing with the pears, the pineapple, and the fruit cocktail. We used to grow all of that stuff here—until the “national brand” realized that labor and materials were so much cheaper in Thailand. The American farms that supplied those American canning plants don’t exist any more; They’ve been ripped out and replaced with tract housing—and it takes about fifteen years to start a peach orchard from scratch—from planting young trees to full-production harvests.

But your precious Dr. No can solve all that with a wave of his magic wand—we just have to believe.

Americas isn’t the Land of OZ—and that magic wands looks a lot like a really long rectal thermometer….