Empowerment for losers?

Things are happening faster than I thought.

As if any further evidence was needed that the 2008 election campaign is now in full swing, here's photographic proof:

HillarySant.jpg

Via the New York Times, which was forced to note (but not question) the timing:

The timing of Mrs. Clinton's remarks is noteworthy: She has recently struck moderate themes, imbuing her speeches with references to faith and prayer and placing far less emphasis on polarizing issues like gay marriage and abortion.
Not to be outdone by the Big Apple's reigning champion, the New York Daily News offered a bit more by way of speculation:
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton stood with one of her most conservative colleagues yesterday to announce a bill to curb sex-and-violence-drenched TV shows and video games.

Clinton (D-N.Y.) has several co-sponsors - including Sens. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) and Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) - for the bill, which would provide government funding to closely study the impact of such video games and shows on kids. But it was conservative Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) who caught the eye of political watchers.

At a Kaiser Family Foundation event before a news conference, Clinton, who's believed to be eying a 2008 White House run, called the proliferation of violence and sex in the media "a silent epidemic." Clinton, Santorum and the others submitted a similar bill last May, but it went nowhere.

Some observers believe Clinton is ratcheting up overtures toward the political right for '08; Santorum is a leading Senate conservative and a lightening rod among gay activists for his anti-gay marriage beliefs.

Alan Van Cappelle, of the Empire State Pride Agenda, said Clinton understands "the mark of a good legislator is someone who could work across the aisle," and said he hopes she will "educate Sen. Santorum on some of the issues she cares about," like gay rights.

This is a brilliant move by Hillary Clinton, and it shows what an astute and capable politician she is. Knowing full well that no triangulation strategy can place her to the right of the country's moral and religious conservatives, her strategy is to appear to side with them. This does three things:

  • 1. Provokes moral conservatives into "proving" themselves to be the "true" moral conservatives -- and the only way to do this is for them to move further to the "right." (A word I use advisedly, because I don't see logically why sex should dictate political positions.)
  • 2. By forcing Republicans into positioning themselves to her right on media issues (including the Internet!), Hillary cements more firmly into place the public perception of Republicans as pro-censorship.
  • 3. By leaving intact the perception that she is to the left of the Republicans, she keeps her hold on liberal voters -- while making the left-wing position ever-so-slightly more palatable to moderate Americans who fear or distrust religious conservatives.
  • Hillary's new image is also bound to please many of the moral conservatives -- who will see it as a victory for "traditional values." They will be in a position to demand a candidate to their liking, hopefully (from Hillary's standpoint) too "extreme" for socially liberal middle American tastes.

    As Rand Simberg recently noted, those who put "moral" principle ahead of victory are losers. (Megadittos from Classical Values!)

    The problem for the rest of us is that they'd rather have Hillary as president than Giuliani or Schwarzenegger. (More think tank money, more time to regroup, less compromising of principles.)

    That's not a problem for Hillary.

    In fact, that may be the whole idea.

    AFTERTHOUGHT: Might it finally be the time to ask whether Hillary is being "heteronormative"?

    posted by Eric on 03.10.05 at 01:19 PM





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    Comments

    Correct, as you often are.

    Personally, I think that Sen. Clinton is magnificent. I'm not sure if she will be running in 2008 or not, but ... Why not? I am open to her candidacy, even thought I am not likely to be an out-and-out volunteer or donor until I see who she is facing in the primaries.

    Her first term in the Senate has shown her to be a strong, effective and (even) self-effacing participant in the system. She has delivered for New York, especially for neglected upstate communities.

    Having seen Sen. Clinton a few times in person, I can also attest that she has a mesmerizing, charismatic personality. People are drawn to her like a magnet. Personal power of this sort cannot be underestimated.

    bink   ·  March 10, 2005 04:49 PM

    Hokay! Let's get down to business here. First of all, the media "meme" that Mrs. Clinton is moving to the "center" by aligning with Santorum is based on an extremely flawed and misleading spectrum, as I showed in my very first post in my series on spectrumology. On the far more accurate spectrum I described in that post, Santorum is on the Far Left, i.e., for total government, and so Mrs. Clinton is moving further to the Left.

    In the 2-dimensional spectrum I described later on, here and here and here, there are actually 4 positions which might be called "center", and Mrs. Clinton is, to use the phrase, "triangulating" between two of them.

    What political position is Mrs. Clinton best known for? She advocated putting the doctors under state control, i.e., she is a collectivist in the realm of economics. What political position is Santorum best known for? He advocated putting our private sexual lives under state control, i.e., he is a collectivist in the realm of morals. The one wants the government to control the material realm, the other wants the government to control the spiritual realm. They converge, therefore, on total government control of everything, which is the totalitarian or Politically Correct "center" on that collectivist, bottom, side of the spectrum.

    On the left side, the materialist side that centers on economics, Mrs. Clinton is, like most politicians, a pragmatist, starting in the mixed-economy "center" between pure capitalism and total economic collectivism or socialism, but moving in that latter direction. Therefore, her "triangulation" consists in drawing a diagonal line that connects these two "center" positions, mixed-economy pragmatism tending toward more and more statism in economics, and, through this alliance with Santorum, a tendency toward total state control over everything, economic and moral, the material and the spiritual. Obviously, this is a very deadly combination. Santorum by himself is deadly enough, but, with Mrs. Clinton supporting him in the name of pragmatic politics, he becomes even deadlier.

    That's the spectrumology of it. Now, here is another crucial point I must make:
    "As Rand Simberg recently noted, those who put "moral" principle ahead of victory are losers. (Megadittos from Classical Values!)"

    This may be true in the short term, but ultimately, it is the most fatal error. Ayn Rand once noted that Karl Marx conquered a third of this planet by being called "an impractical idealist". When you concede the moral high ground to your enemies, when you concede any part of their moral premises, it is they who will win. Santorum and the side he represents is winning precisely because too many have conceded to him the realm of morality, of values, of the spiritual, which is in the end the most decisive. The Caesars conquered and ruled the Mediterranean for many centuries through military force, but it was a certain Jewish carpenter whom they had crucified who ultimately became the conqueror and ruler of the entire Western world. It is religion, the source of ultimate values, the source of our view of our ultimate origin, meaning, and destiny, which is the force that shapes our world, and which we must recapture.

    We must never surrender it to our enemies. We must never surrender to Santorum and his side the title of the "moral" or "religious conservatives". We must expose him for the radical collectivist that he is. We must uphold the supreme value of the individual, the privacy, autonomy, power, and holiness of the individual man or woman in the realm of the spiritual, of values.

    I must uphold my highest, holiest, eternal, absolute values, dogmas: Polytheistic Godliness, Selfishness, Sexiness. Conservative Lesbian Individualist Theology. The Ego striving for the Infinite.



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