Suitably Flip

Hillary's Homework

Socializing medicine is just the beginning, one learns as one plumbs the forboding depths of Hillary's intellect.  Senator Clinton's undergraduate book report thesis, long missing from the Wellesley archives, has resurfaced.  (HT: Hot Air)

For a woman accused of moving to the political center, Hillary Clinton - more than any other Democratic candidate - knows the terrain on the Hard Left.

Clinton, who majored in political science at Wellesley, chose leftist organizer Saul Alinsky, author of Rules for Radicals, as the centerpiece of a 1969 thesis on poverty in the United States.
...
It depicted an ideal world.

But it warned warned (sic) that only socialists could build that world and probably only with force.
...
Sure, it was written in 1969.

But, put in the context of more recent statements, her thesis is a recipe for the socialism - and the left-wing politics - that Mrs. Clinton would propound if she were elected president of the United States.

The society it depicts is interesting.

But it is not America.

It makes her campaign song - "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" - seem more like a threat than a promise.

Yes, it was nearly 40 years ago.  And yes, that was an era when being an unwashed socialist hippie was somewhat more in vogue (no one ever accused Hillary of not bending to prevailing political fashions).  Do people change?  Sure, maybe.  But why take the chance?  Surely among our candidates there must be a few who actually had their heads screwed on straight back then.

What, you might ask in hopes of drawing a relevant comparison, was that other prominent Presidential candidate from New York doing while Hillary was busy swooning to the socialist scribblings of a self-styled "radical liberal"?  Having just graduated cum laude from NYU Law School, young Rudy was clerking for a U.S. District judge, the beginning of a distinguished and crime-busting 25-year pre-mayoral legal career spent almost entirely in service to the public.

Some people may change, but others are simply skilled at simulating change when it suits their interests.  It can be hard to tell the difference when such political camouflage is well-funded and has been carefully honed over decades.  So why take the chance?  There are irrefutably serious candidates and then there are aging hipster radicals who really and truly want us to know they finally took a centrist turn around the dawn of the 21st century and are now serious and de-radicalized too.

Maybe we can believe them, but with more credible alternatives in the field, thankfully we don't have to.

Comments

Hillary's Homework

Socializing medicine is just the beginning, one learns as one plumbs the forboding depths of Hillary's intellect.  Senator Clinton's undergraduate book report thesis, long missing from the Wellesley archives, has resurfaced.  (HT: Hot Air)

For a woman accused of moving to the political center, Hillary Clinton - more than any other Democratic candidate - knows the terrain on the Hard Left.

Clinton, who majored in political science at Wellesley, chose leftist organizer Saul Alinsky, author of Rules for Radicals, as the centerpiece of a 1969 thesis on poverty in the United States.
...
It depicted an ideal world.

But it warned warned (sic) that only socialists could build that world and probably only with force.
...
Sure, it was written in 1969.

But, put in the context of more recent statements, her thesis is a recipe for the socialism - and the left-wing politics - that Mrs. Clinton would propound if she were elected president of the United States.

The society it depicts is interesting.

But it is not America.

It makes her campaign song - "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" - seem more like a threat than a promise.

Yes, it was nearly 40 years ago.  And yes, that was an era when being an unwashed socialist hippie was somewhat more in vogue (no one ever accused Hillary of not bending to prevailing political fashions).  Do people change?  Sure, maybe.  But why take the chance?  Surely among our candidates there must be a few who actually had their heads screwed on straight back then.

What, you might ask in hopes of drawing a relevant comparison, was that other prominent Presidential candidate from New York doing while Hillary was busy swooning to the socialist scribblings of a self-styled "radical liberal"?  Having just graduated cum laude from NYU Law School, young Rudy was clerking for a U.S. District judge, the beginning of a distinguished and crime-busting 25-year pre-mayoral legal career spent almost entirely in service to the public.

Some people may change, but others are simply skilled at simulating change when it suits their interests.  It can be hard to tell the difference when such political camouflage is well-funded and has been carefully honed over decades.  So why take the chance?  There are irrefutably serious candidates and then there are aging hipster radicals who really and truly want us to know they finally took a centrist turn around the dawn of the 21st century and are now serious and de-radicalized too.

Maybe we can believe them, but with more credible alternatives in the field, thankfully we don't have to.