Hillary Watch: GOPer Says Republicans Need Someone To Stop Hillary Clinton
John Podhoretz, writing in the Boston Herald, has a column almost pleading for the GOP to get someone to compete against Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton, whom he suggests will be the inevitable Democratic nominee. In a column titled “Republicans be warned: Someone must stop Hillary,” it’s clear that when he looks around the field he doesn’t like what he sees:
Because Massachusetts is one shuttle stop away from New York – home to likely Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Hillary Clinton – the Great Mentioner occasionally murmurs the name of Gov. Mitt Romney.Romney, an accomplished businessman and genuinely creative politician, might be the central casting choice for the Republican nomination but for one inconvenient but unmistakable fact: He is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
As a member of a minority religion, Romney is almost certainly unelectable in the United States in 2008. This is something the Great Mentioner finds it rude to say, and speaking as a Jew myself, I wish it were not so.
He feels the U.S. isn’t ready to elect a Mormon as President — partly due to the GOP’s base:
A bid by Romney for the nomination will cause newspaper and television channels to write articles about the Mormon church and its tenets – and the fact that it considers itself the true version of Christianity rather than one of the branches of Christianity will be very disturbing to base Republican voters, most of whom will be learning about it for the first time.Granted, no religion and its founding miracles sound sane when described from the outside, but still, tell that to people who find out that Mormons baptize the dead in absentia, that a truly pious man can become a god himself after death, and that God’s heavenly city on Earth will be built in and around Independence, Mo.
That would be a shock, indeed: to many Americans, God’s heavenly city on earth already exists in and around Las Vegas NV.
So he feels Romney is out.
What about Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice?
“I am second to no one in my admiration of Condi Rice, but the presidency is not an entry-level job.”
He then notes there have been a few exceptions such as Ulysses S. Grant, Dwight D. Eisenhower — and Herbert Hoover (“Anyone want to use him as a model?”)
So whom does he find the most intriguing?
It’s an amazing thing Rudolph Giuliani has not served in public office since January 2002. The office he held, the mayoralty of New York City, is known as a graveyard for those ambitious to use it as a steppingstone to other political jobs. And yet in every poll of Republican primary voters about whom they would prefer to be the nominee in 2008, Giuliani comes out first or second, neck and neck with Sen. John McCain and nobody else even choking on their dust.
Giuliani….McCain…and Hillary?
Maybe Rudy Giuliani will decide to take a starring role on “Law and Orderâ€? instead of seeking the presidency. Maybe John McCain will decide to skip the rigors of the road and sit at home with Chris Matthews massaging his feet every hour on the hour. Maybe Mitt Romney will prove me wrong and by 2009 he will be the first self-described saint ever elected to the highest office in the land. (Oh, sorry – I forgot about Jimmy Carter.) We only speculate on what will happen between these people and the nation they might lead, or what events may occur that might spin the next election on an unforseeable axis.And maybe Hillary Clinton won’t be the Democratic nominee after all.
What’s interesting about this piece are several assumptions: (1) Hillary Clinton is unstoppable and that the Democratic primaries are basically a formality (2) Hillary Clinton is a danger (she is a polarizing figure and this column in the side of the Hillary-as-threat) (3) the present political landscape presents the only pool of highly visible choices to primary voters and political elites in both parties.
In fact, if you look at American political history, the candidate who eventually got the nomination has not always been the one who was a perceived front-runner a year or two before the nomination. If you don’t believe that do a search about President Edmund Muskie, President Gary Hart, President John Connally and others.
Hillary Clinton has the money, name recognition (which cuts both ways her case), organization, and political smarts (not forgetting about the folks at home and positioning herself to be a Democrat who’s considered independent but not yet reviled among Democrats on the left as is Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman) at this juncture. And perhaps the $$$ factor is the deciding one. But we’ve seen candidates catch on like wildfire before.
Similarly, Giuliani and McCain are going to have to prove that they can go beyond getting good press and sustaining lofty press images to show that when they get down to it in an actual campaign by winning votes by impressive margins and showing that they can put together solid political coalitions.
And then there’s this: who in each party will become the candidate who emerges from left/right field and takes the race by storm, suddenly emerging as the Flavor-of-The-Week topic of media stories, becoming the topic of talking-heads’ speculation, and then becoming the center of the inevitable political primary news cycle (media builds the candidate up; media shoots the candidate down; and the media then writes about the candidate’s big comeback from the media shooting the candidate down)? Do the names Howard Dean (someone who was supposedly poised to make a huge showing in the primaries) and John Kerry (someone who was supposedly pretty much a candidate on the wane) come to mind.
And then there are factors to be penciled in such as the Bush administration’s handling of unforeseen events, whether Josh Bolten’s new era as Chief of Staff changes things for the better (better polls, more efficient policies, smoother administration) or makes things worse (stubbing his toe by doing something as political suicidal as eliminating televised press briefings and therefore sparking a new wave of news stories about a defensive Bush administration trying to avoid scrutiny). Natural disasters? Iran? Karl Rove’s political fate?
Hillary may be a perceived front-runner now and Romney, Giuliani and McCain may be seemingly defined in a certain way now. But those are mere snapshots of May 2006.
The snapshots that’ll really matter are the ones from which partisans of both parties will choose in the spring of 2008 — and the two from which all Americans must choose in November 2008.
(NOTE: We see the Boston Herald is no longer offering this link. We did a Google search on this piece and can’t find it. But we will leave this post up. If we can find another link to this at a later date we’ll add it, and add a note on it underneath this one.)
12 Responses to “Hillary Watch: GOPer Says Republicans Need Someone To Stop Hillary Clinton”
Could someone please show her the proper way to salute? I mean HELLO!!!
I’m not saying that I would vote for him ( for ideological reasons), but I do think its outrageous that Mitt Romney’s religious beliefs would preclude him from getting the Republican nomination in ’08. From what I can tell, he seems to be a pragmatic problem solver, who has run a liberal state fairly well. Can the Republicans win by running a candidate like George Allen, who passes their religious litmus test?
Politicians like George Bush and Tom Delay, who recieve their missions from G-d have proven that they lack flexibility and introspection, and may create an unintended backlash to their socially conservative agenda. I,personally, would like a president who is independent of the Christian Coalition.
Mr Gandelman, I believe you are confused.
The right wing is desperate to have Hillary run.
Some people, like Dick Morris, have no future careers if a non-Clintonite gets the nod. Morris and others have written books on Hillary.
Most glib right-wingers simply don’t know about any of the other possible candidates, so can only flap their gums about Hillary.
However, only a bare majority of _New_York_ Democrats want Hillary to run for the nomination. There are Democrats out there, not sure who they are, who want Hillary to run.
I’ve never met one of them.
I suspedct that the Herald ran Podhoretz’ column early in the online edition, and had to pull it.
I’d lok for it in NRO or the NY Post next
Con-da-people Rice? No frickin’ way! Black, female and Republican. Ain’t gonna happen. I don’t see Hillary getting through the primaries either. What a load of crap!
I’m not saying I’d vote for Cond, but I’d like to live to see the day when she’d get a fair shot in this country. I remember the 1960 election when people were afraid that Kennedy’s first loyalty would be to the Pope! Can we ever get beyond race, sex and religion in politics and just vote on the candidate and the issues???
Kritter says: “Can we ever get beyond race, sex and religion in politics and just vote on the candidate and the issues???”
Apparently not, since he mentions in his first comment that “I’m not saying that I would vote for him (for ideological reasons)” …
It’s a big IF, but IF Romney emerges as a front-runner at nomination time, the “Christian” community will have a nice dilemma on their hands. They can vote for Romney and support him, betraying their ignorant, ideological hatred of Mormons, OR they can shun him on the basis of his religion and look like absolute hypocrites.
If the former, they run the perceived risk of endorsing a religion for which they have no tolerance. If the latter, they betray the American ideals they so firmly pronounce – can any qualified person win the office of President, or only people w/ a certain ideological bend?
Nice, very nice.
boat anchor—My ideological reasons have nothing to do with Gov. Romney’s religion, they have more to do with the fact that his political views are more conservative than mine—that’s what I look at when I vote. I don’t care if he’s Mormon, Quaker, Hindu, Jew or Christian.
I am denouncing the influence that the Christian Coalition has on picking candidates. My point is that given an otherwise qualified candidate, why can’t we, in 2008,look past religion, sex and race. By the way, your other assumption was wrong as well—I am female! Have a nice day.
Why are some people so concerned about Republican Mitt Romney being a Mormon? Are they unaware that Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, who is on the opposite end of the spectrum from Romney, is also a Mormon? Obviously, it is not their religious beliefs that drive their political views.
Yes, I’m one, too, as are some 5 million other U.S. citizens.
I read somewhere that Jerry Falwell has already decided that he could never endorse Giuliani—a divorced, pro-choice Catholic.. Republican party strategists are predicting that the Christian Coalition would never endorse a Mormon since they (Mormons)believe that theirs is the only true Christian faith. (feel free to correct me if I’m wrong here).
Apparently, the Coalition is powerful enough to defeat a candidate they don’t approve of—I believe they helped in the 2000 South Carolina primary defeat of John McCain—as he rejected the influence of fundamentalism in the political arena, which is one of the reasons the Republicans nominated Bush–the evangelical. This time around, John McCain made his peace with Falwell.
Anyway, that is why religion and politics don’t mix in my view. I’m more concerned with blocking candidates that ARE chosen because they are fundamentalists!
Mitt has credibility and has already (thus far) proven the pundits wrong. Suppose he GETS the Republican nod. Who are the fundamentalists going to root for – Hillary? Hillarious. Evangelicals will look past the doctrinal differences and focus on the common battles Mormons and Evangelicals share – and they share MANY. My guess is that Mitt will make his peace with Fallwell &crew well in time to overcome those obstacles. McCain is a RINO and will NEVER excite the conservative Republican base. He’ll do well in limited markets (think: Bob Doll), but he’s unelectable nationally – he has no MESSAGE. Guiliani – good mayer, but I don’t think he has national staying power. At this point, like him or not (of a truth, I like him), I think Romney’s the only viable game in town.
Mormons, (members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – aka: LDS) respect all faiths, and provide humanitarian assistance to people around the world regardless of race, religion, gender, etc. Of course they believe their religion is the “true way” or otherwise why would they adhere to it? They are typically hard-working, family-oriented people with higher than average education levels, especially among women.
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TITLE: Special reports
BLOG NAME: respublica
A web site that gives me the cold chills: Archimede’s Laboratory which has a page titled, What’s special about this number? an endless series of math related information. What’s special? I’m clueless. via Eric Zorn The United States is close