Hillary's Path Not Taken [Rich Lowry]
Why hasn't Hillary Clinton attacked Barack Obama as a fraud? As it became increasingly clear that Hillary's theme of experience couldn't beat Obama's theme of change, Hillary just looked for different and more powerful ways to make the experience argument. What she has never done in any sustained way is try to take Obama's theme away from him, to point out that he's not a unifying figure but an orthodox left-winger, that he's not a courageous politician but one who tacks with the wind, that he's not someone who reaches across the aisle, but a down-the-line partisan. She could make the case—as McCain is beginning to—that Obama represents more of the same as a typical politician. Is Hillary in the best position to make this argument as a polarizing figure with more than her share of opportunistic re-positionings? Of course not. (Frankly, she's not in the best position to make the experience argument either—see, Tuzla, Bosnia, alleged sniper fire in). And if she tried to do it at this juncture of the race, most of the Democratic party would probably rise up in revolt. It would be more evidence that she's implicitly tag-teaming the likely Democratic nominee with John McCain. The closest she has ever come to making this case is saying that words don't constitute deeds. But when she has, it has come across as an attack on Obama's eloquence. Obama's silver tongue is not the problem, though, it's that he's pretending to be a soothing post-partisan figure when nothing in his record suggest that he is. His campaign is based on an essential phoniness. Why wasn't this one of the utensils in Hillary's "kitchen sink"?
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