It sounds as if suggestions that Republicans are rooting for Senator Hillary Clinton to be the 2008 Democratic Presential nominee are for real.
And, in the end, if she gets the nomination the question is going to be whether she proves them correct or this will be like when the Democrats just could not WAIT until the Republicans nominated a former actor and California govenor who they felt was shallow and too right wing for the nation to EVER be elected:
He may be on his way out the door at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in coming days. But the party Karl Rove has labored to build over the past eight years seems to have picked up his talking points on next year’s presidential race: Hillary Rodham Clinton is going to be the Democratic nominee and that could be the GOP’s saving grace in an otherwise uphill battle.
Conversations with Republicans gathered here for the biennial Midwest Republican Leadership Conference reflect a party unenthused or just plain uncertain about their potential White House nominee. But GOP faithful also seem quite confident and even upbeat about the prospect that the senator from New York is, as Rove put it, the “prohibitive favorite to win the nomination.â€
That likelihood, they say, is good news for any hopes of keeping the White House and getting other Republicans on the ballot elected.
Asked if Clinton being the nominee would improve his party’s chances both nationally and in Indiana, Howard County (Ind.) GOP Chair Craig Dunn got excited. “Absolutely, absolutely!†he exclaimed animatedly, grinning widely. “We’ve never elected a president of the United States who started off with 45 percent unfavorable ratings!â€
That true. The current Republican President and Rove had to work hard to achieve that rank. The Politico piece also quotes a governor as saying: “But our party is going to present a new face, a new program, a new look to America and it might just be one that is good enough to win.â€
And Republicans here are hopeful that they’ll get to contrast that fresh look with a Democrat who they think Americans will reject as part of a checkered past and who can only boost their hopes to get otherwise dispirited GOP activists to come out and vote.
It’s why the focus on Clinton is so constant that it bordered on obsessive in both the official sessions and less-formal corridor conversations here.
In a multimedia presentation to the most diehard of GOP heartland activists, RNC Chair Mike Duncan played and replayed a video of Clinton talking about the economy in a manner he claimed smacked of “socialism.â€
However, if Republicans are going to launch a campaign claiming she is a socialist, it’s going to be a campaign that will appeal mostly to the party’s base. Rove’s winning formula for election was to mobilize the base because you could win and govern with 50 + 1. The dilemma for GOPERS: their base has shrunk over the past few years due to Bush’s and the GOP’s growing unpopularity.
So they’re going to have to do better than to try to paint Ms. Clinton as a socialist or talk about the travel office or Whitewater again. Their constituency — if they want to win — is going to be more than Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity fans.
Presumably Hillary Clinton, her husband Bill and the people surrounding her know what’s coming if she gets the nomination and are prepared to respond immediately with defensive and offensive actions of their own. They most assuredly have seen stories LIKE THIS and are well-prepared. And if they’re not prepared? Then they will be guilty of political negligence.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.