An end to government support of the arts. An end to quality oversights on our food and drugs. An end to public education. An end to social security.
No thanks, Liberal. I don’t want to be a member of that society.
No, I meant that the latter part of what she said, about deciding not to run, was about Mark Warner.
What more important issue did she deal with? Yes, it’s a fucking dumb question and it’s an embarrassment to us as a country and as a species that it gets asked. But she didn’t do anybody any favors by not answering a simple question. If she’d said something in favor of gay rights, or said “there are more important issues facing America” without directly answering the morality question, I’d probably consider that a positive. But she avoided the question, then responded to it hours later via press release. That makes it sound like she was worried about what kind of soundbyte her answer would make.
Personally, I filter out chocolate chip cookie episodes as being irrelevant fluff for the plebes.[1] I’ve even forgotten this anecdote.
Given her early rejection of single payer, I’ve never thought of her as particularly far to the left. I think she’s a centrist Democrat like her husband, minus the political smarts or common touch. That said, the evidence indicates that she’s quite personable outside of the airwaves.
Right. And what too many people feel about her seems wholly based upon stupid anecdotes.
Here’s a question: what policy positions of Ms. Clinton’s do you disagree with, and why don’t you feel the same vehemence for the bizzillion other politicians with the exact same stance?
Don’t get me wrong though. I think that there are a fair number of swing voters who don’t like Hillary and don’t want to. So it would be a really bad idea for the Democratic Party to nominate her, though I think she could beat any Republican candidate during a recession or Gulliani during normal times. Then again though, so could the remaining plausible Democratic candidates.
That said, Ms. Clinton could evolve into a terrific Senator, in my view.
On Preview: Yes, Marley, Clinton is worried about what kind of soundbite her answer would produce. As she should be: anything she utters can get over-amplified and pounced upon by a news market obsessed with the trivial. That’s her reality, one she understands largely with little complaint.
[1] I have no problem with expressing this form of snobbery, btw, since it is wholly behavior-based.
Well, you got three out of four. Better than most people. 
But I do, so as you can see — I know a little bit about how you feel.
Problem bein’ that she’s running for President.
I guess she blew it, because her reply still made the news. Someone decided it was newsworthy that a candidate who says she supports gay rights needed hours to decide if she thought gay “acts” are immoral. I can’t imagine why that was newsworthy.
Of course she understands it without complaint. It has many downsides, but it also gives her excuses not to act on her words. If she decides it’s too much trouble to do anything to support gay rights, she can just pay lipservice to them and wait for people to applaud her for her progressive hot air. And on that note, I applaud Senator Clinton’s press office for deciding that she strongly disagrees with Pace’s remarks.
Measure,
I object to her unrepentent support for the war in Iraq. I object to her support for making flag burning illegal. I object to her sponsoring the pandering legislation condemning the scourge of violent videogames while sitting on her hands as the war progressed, letting others like Murtha lead the charge against the then still prevailing wind of support for the war and change peoples minds. In each case she went with where the political wind seemed to be blowing at the time, trying to position herself in the everchanging center spot and never trying to get out in front and lead.
It is more notable however that for most things I do not know what she really stands for. I have no sense of kinds of policy decisions she would make and how she would make them other than by consulting her handlers as to which would be the safest politically.
You care about policy, not personality. What do you like about her policy positions? What sorts of policy does she stand for to you?
I care about both. Personality includes integrity. Personality includes those skills needed to actually get a job done: leadership capacity; decision making style; the ability to unite our divisive country in pursuit of shared goals and values, ones that we may have not have realized until a great leader articulated them for us. Great Presidents have both good policies and the personalities needed to get those policies actualized. I see no evidence that she possesses either of those.
But to be honest there is this visceral dislike for her that goes beyond that rational analysis. When she as the Presidential spouse behaved like she was co-President, like she was elected to the office, and was entrusted with something as important as healthcare reform, and handled it with such a rare blend of arrogance and incompetence that the well for reform was then poisoned for years … well she became the kind of person that I love to see have brought down … the person who thinks they know so much when they really do not. That reaction is not rational analysis; but it informs meaningfully anyway.
And oh yes, I would be against the bizillion other politicos who took those positions as well, if not with the same schoolyard scrapper intensity.
My antipathy for Hillary can be summed up in one phrase: “All of the triangulation of Bill with 1/4 of the charisma”. I’m really becoming very tired of bland, calculating, please-everyone-all-the-time politicians. Yo, politicos! If you find the Bush administration’s shenanigans troubling, SAY SO! Fight for oversight! End the freakin’ war! Don’t mumble and stumble and hem and haw and step all over your own feet in an attempt not to actually say anything that can be considered “controversial”. How about taking all that unnecessary time you waste trying to figure out the right thing to say and instead using it to figure out the right thing to DO?
I know, I know…I’m in for a LONG wait (though Edwards looks good).
ETA: I also just plain think the Dems can do better than Clinton. I don’t necessarily know WHO they can attract for the spot yet (other than Edwards) but I do think there have to be better candidates out there…
If Richardson can outspin the womanizing, I’d say he’s got a decent chance, he just also needs to get more attention. He’s my favorite of the candidates who are actually running.
Which one did I get wrong? The only one I haven’t personally heard a libertarian argue against is funding the arts, but I can’t imagine that NEA grants are high on the libertarian list of acceptable use of government power.
No one that I know favors “an end to quality oversights on our food and drugs”. If anything, our oversight should be far more stringent. I think we explain very poorly what we mean by “limited government” because it only means that we want government to limit the scope of its intervention, not the power of it. Government should do exactly the sort of thing described by your phrase, and much more in that vein. There should not be any minimally acceptable amounts of pollution in our water or feces in our hamburger, unless we elect to tolerate them for ourselves. And sellers who falsely represent their products, from food to aspirin, should lose their liberty.
Perfectly expressed and brilliantly exploited by her opposition (youtube).
I’m not a huge HRC fan, but come on! What do you expect her, or anyone to say in a situation like that?
she is running for president, and that requires that sometimes you dont get to say what you really think. At this time in our nations history no Gay friendly politican has a chance in hell of becoming president. At least not an openly Gay friendly person.
So instead of looking at what she says, look at what she has done. Now if after that you find she is still hating the Gay agenda, well then, pit away. Until then… grow up a little.
People keep saying this as if she were being asked to boil a kitten on live TV.
How about I want her to say what John Edwards said? Here, right off the bat, the first question asked:
Wolf Blitzer: “Is homosexuality immoral?”
John Edwards: “I don’t share that view, and I would go further…”
Or is Hillary Clinton’s candidacy so much more important to the world that she’s allowed to weasel while others just say things straight out?
Clinton defenders always pull this. “But how can you expect her not to weasel? How can you expect her to defend flag burning? How can you expect her to fight against the war? How can you expect her not to attack video games? How can she win if she’s not a lying shit weasel?”
Okay, they don’t say the last one, but it’s what you mean, dammit.
Well no, thats not what I mean. And comparing her silence on Gays in the military is not the same as keeping silent on the Iraq war. You know its not, I have seen you post enough to know better.
And hey, I respect Edwards that he had the balls to come out on the issue but then again he wont be president in 2008. But again, look at the records… While Edwards may sound like he is gay friendly, what has he actually done besides talk to show that? What had HRC done?
I’m not saying anything is equivalent. I’m saying it’s all evidence of her fundamental inability to stand up for what I consider right while she’s defended by people who also don’t agree with her but who excuse her in the name of being electable.
Who will be? You think this will get Clinton elected?
Except the question wasn’t, “Should gays be allowed to serve openly in the military,” or “Should gays be allowed to marry.” It was, “Is homosexuality immoral?” That’s not a question of policy, or legality, but a simple question about what she thinks about homosexuality. The fact that she couldn’t say, right off the bat, that she doesn’t agree with that statement is pretty pathetic, especially in light of the noises she makes about supporting gay rights. If there’s some question in her mind about the morality of homosexuality, why is she supporting our rights? If her actions support gay rights, there’s no reason not to match words to speech. Unless she supports gay rights only as a matter of political convenience, and is willing to abandon the issue when it is to her advantage to do so.
Liberal, I’ve seen libertarians argue for the abolishment of the FDA. Is this not, in fact, a libertarian position?
Do you think him saying what you wanted to hear will get Edwards elected?
-Joe