White Southern males would be my guess.
I hope this isn’t offensive, but much like earlier “Why does everyone hate Hillary?” threads, you’re going to get several dozen responses that all have different and equally valid reasons why someone doesn’t like her. Rejecting responses that don’t fit with a preconceived notion, or narrowing down responses to only certain types of opinions will result in all Hillary haters being sexist, slack-jawed, rednecks.
Edwards isn’t as obnoxious and doesn’t have 16 years as much in the public eye as Clinton. Everyone knows everything she’s done, yet the only time I hear about Edwards is during the runup to an election.
Most people hate Hillary Clinton because there has been a eighteen year long media campaign telling them they should hate her. Enough selling and you can convince most people of anything - including the belief that they form their own opinions and weren’t sold anything.
The people who have run this campaign oppose Hillary Clinton because her interests are different from their interests. But they know that meaningless button pushing issues are more effective in manipulating other people than an actual debate on the real topics would be.
Partly because of braindead shit like this. Yes, there actually are people who can call the most right-leaning Dem candidate in the field a “Communist” with a straight face or its online equivalent.
How many countries does that leave outside those two categories, though?
I mean, your “smallish social-welfare state” category apparently includes Western democracies up to the size of Germany (chancellor Angela Merkel, population over 82 million).
And your “turbulent Third World country” category apparently includes non-Western countries as stable as India (former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi).
I agree that having a female head of state still isn’t very common worldwide, but AFAICT it’s a phenomenon that defies simple categorization of the sort you’re attempting here. Not that many countries have had a female head of state, but the ones who have have been a pretty diverse bunch.
Couple reasons. Bush Clinton Clinton Bush Bush Clinton is one. The other is that I can’t stand her phony public persona. And I don’t like that she apparently doesn’t have a single principled political position of her own. She’s a communitarian, I’m a libertarian, which means she’s on the wrong side of just about every issue from my point of view.
Does that mean I must love George Bush, as Calm Kiwi so illogically concluded?
No, I dislike George Bush for all sorts of reason. Can’t I hate both of them, for Christ’s sake?
Now, just because I don’t like Hillary doesn’t mean I will automatically vote for her opponent. In a choice between Hillary and Rudy I’ll go with Hillary. Hillary vs Romney I go with Hillary. Personally I hope that the Democrats can nominate Obama, I’d vote for him happily.
Hillary’s main pluses are that she’s a cast iron bitch, and I mean that in the nicest possible way. It would be nice to have a president who makes their own decisions for a change. Plus her utterly pragmatic machine-style status quo approach to politics at least has the effect that she’s not going try things that are both incredibly stupid and incredibly unpopular, again, a nice change.
Why the hatred for Hillary?
It’s like the old song tells us. “You have to be carefully taught” how and whom to hate. The Hillary-haters have been very carefully and relentlessly taught to hate her. They believe a richly embroidered, finely crafted web of smears and lies.
So, what makes you think that you haven’t been carefully and relentlessly taught to hate them? What makes you think that you don’t believe a richly embroidered, finely crafted web of smears and lies about them?
If she’s a communitarian, that is a principled political position.
At any rate, that brings up another prpblem: There are Americans (not Lemur, I’m sure) who are too stupid to distinguish “communitarian” from “communist.”
Here’s one reason she pegs my hate-o-meter. There are others.
I own Exxon-Mobil stock and am not ashamed to say it. The stock symbol is XOM for those of you that want to make some money in the next year. In a speech about eight months ago Hillary was talking about the large oil company profits recently announced. Her exact statement (I watched the speech again) was “I want to take those profits and I want to put them in a strategic energy fund…” Notice she didn’t use the word “tax” but used the word “take”. A confiscatory mindset like hers will whack me right in the wallet hard enough to hate the woman with a passion.
Hi newdoctordec, and welcome to the Straight Dope. Are you telling us that you seriously believe that Hillary Clinton, if she were President, would actually seek to tax oil company profits at a literally “confiscatory” rate of 100%?
Did anything in her husband’s two Administrations provide any evidence to support such a radical notion? Do you honestly think that any of the Democratic candidates is actually in favor of 100% tax rates on the profits of any industry?
Indeed. It takes a village.
Me, for one. John Edwards just gives me a mildly distasteful Pat Sajak vibe. With Hillary, it’s pretty damn near full-blown contempt.
Why, I wonder, does that old soundbite keep getting quoted against HRC? All she was saying was that children need to be educated and socialized by more than just their own families – a statement not only obviously true, but so utterly innocuous, middlebrow and Rotarian in tone that I cannot see how the most radical conservative or libertarian could have the mildest objection to it.
Care to provide specific reasons? And something more susbantial than you have in this thread to date?
“Are you telling us that you seriously believe that Hillary Clinton, if she were President, would actually seek to tax oil company profits at a literally “confiscatory” rate of 100%?”
Absolutely ! She said it with a straight face. Why would she say it if she didn’t mean it ?
Not only that, but they’re getting better and better at it.
Or, in the words (near as I recall them) of Ellsworth Monkton Toohey in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead: “A dead issue, like a dead organism, does not vanish entirely, but leaves a decomposing residue behind.”
Oh dear God. If you’re going to quote an author in regards to Hillary, try Machiavelli.
Because she’s a socialist.
Ahh . . . yeah. Right. See posts #44 and 49.
Um, because she (or her speechwriters) assumed that any halfway-sentient audience would be able to figure out that she wasn’t intending a casual use of the word “take” to imply a literal proposal of a 100% tax rate?
I mean, you don’t have to indulge in this kind of voodoo textual analysis to get an idea of what HRC’s opinions are on corporate taxation. Look at her record. Look at her stated positions.
Hell, look at her list of corporate backers. Do you think they’d be giving her money if they thought there was a chance in hell that she might even think of imposing such an unprecedentedly draconian tax policy? There is nobody outside of FrootLoopLand who seriously considers it plausible that any major candidate’s views on corporate taxes are literally “confiscatory”. Not even Kucinich, who is far to the left of Clinton, would even consider proposing such a thing.
Saying that Clinton wants to tax oil company profits at 100% is like saying that Mike Huckabee wants to conscript all American 18-year-olds into the military and have them convert all American non-Christians to evangelical Protestantism via fire and sword.* It simply is not anywhere in the galactic neighborhood of the realm of practical politics. And if there’s one thing that Clinton has made it clear that she is, it’s a practical politician.
*Now there’s a scenario that would make the fantasy world of email spam more interesting, don’t you think?
What jackelope said.
I find it appalling that America’s history of electing family dynasties like the Adamses, Harrisons and Roosevelts seems to be solidifying with the ascent of the Bush and Clinton dynasties. Let’s not forget that Jeb Bush is still a possibility down the road, and there are enough Kennedys in the wings for a whole new Camelot.
My girlfriend is a French citizen, and claims that this trend makes America less a democracy than France. I don’t know that I agree with her, but I don’t feel like arguing it much.
I voted for Bill Clinton twice, but I really don’t want to see Hillary elected. The only way I could see myself voting for her will be if the Republicans nominate a religious righty like Brownback or Huckabee, and even then I will be holding my nose.