Thursday, February 7, 2008

Romney’s out

He couldn’t depart without one last weaselly gem: “If I fight on [ . . . ], I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror.”

Oh, Mitt. The GOP has already surrendered to terror. Their drumbeat relies on surrender to terror. It advocates the suspension of American freedoms in the face of terror, it aids and abets terror by using wrong-headed tactics against the wrong people, it promotes terror by making sure to anger a whole new generation of potential terrorists through violence and idiocy, and it guarantees more terror by allowing the terrorists to get away with it, while advocating terrorist tactics (like torture) to gain questionable information. Nobody has done more to destroy the American way of life than your party’s representative in the White House.

Personally, I think the United States is more likely to stand steadfast against terror under either Clinton or Obama. They, at least, give every appearance of still valuing our freedoms and values.

The CPAC trolls are howling, of course—it appears that it’s really down to Mike Huckabee and John McCain now, and they’re not so fond of either one—Huckabee won’t suck up to them enough, and McCain, due to some brain-fractured logic I cannot follow, is apparently an eeeeevil liburul. (“Fox News” even went so far as to put the caption “Senator John McCain (D–AZ)” over an image of McCain on Your World with Neil Cavuto today. Thanks to MediaBistro for the image.)

An increasing number of trolls are now offering to fund-raise for the Clinton campaign (the latest is Limbaugh). They seem to feel that Clinton will so polarize the election that ensuring her nomination will be the best way to weaken the Democrats.

I’ve been refusing to give in to those who continually grind at the Clintons. There are a lot of people out there I respect who constantly harp on her, using phrases like “fundamental dishonesty” among others. (I felt that GWB was a deeply dishonest man in the 2000 election, one who surrounded himself with dishonest men. He has since proven himself to be the lyingest President in our history. Yet few of the people harping on Clinton about dishonesty are willing to admit to this, much less press for his impeachment as assiduously as they pressed for Bill Clinton’s over matters of far less import.)

The problem is, few of their claims are sound, based more on longtime prejudice than fact. But it’s sure tiresome to hear the questionable potshots over and over and over, even from otherwise relatively sane conservatives like Andrew Sullivan:

• The Clintons' Self-Financing: The potshot: “Kinda sleazy? The Clintons?”
• Was The $5 Million Self-Loan A Ruse?: The potshot in this one: “The Clintons even spin and lie to their own donors.”
• Scummy Clinton Donors: (Where was Andrew’s outrage over GWB’s scummy donors?)

I like Andrew, but geez.

Note to all of you with the knee-jerk reactions to Hillary Clinton: Give it a rest. Come up with something real, or quit yowling about her.

With particular regard to the donor issue: The least you folks can do is try to be a little less hypocritical. Few of you complained much about GWB’s donors, or the access they were given at the White House (oh, you can’t, because the Bush administration won’t let you see the seekrit visitor logs!). I seem to remember the involvement of such stellar ethicists as Jack Abramoff, James Tobin, Raul Garza, Sam Fox, Robert Kjellander—oh, this could be a long list. Not to mention Tom DeLay, Ralph Reed, the Wyly brothers . . . what fun.

Where were you people then? And why so much more concern about donors now?

Look, the Clinton campaign is going to have a lot of bumps and gurgles along the way, just as every other campaign does. Most of those bumps and gurgles are going to be meaningless, based on out-of-context snippets from their past, the inevitable mistake or two in their past, and so on. (Yes, it’s sad that nobody is perfect, isn’t it?) Let’s try concentrating on the bumps and gurgles that are in the present, that indicate actual, ongoing flaws with a candidate, and then evaluate those based on their seriousness.

They will happen soon enough, I’m afraid.