GW is a shoe in for 8 yrs and the worthless on this board that ID them selves as Democrats best
get use to the fact that your days are over. Clinton took your liberal ideals and flushed them
down the preverbal hole. GW kick your idealistic ASS right out of washington last night. but
don't let that stop you liberal whiners out there. your dribble about taxes and the pardons
and your indifference of the worthless, CLINTONS, gives me a good laugh.
Wed Feb 28 2001 10:36:27 ET
NEW YORK PAPER CALLS ON HILLARY TO RESIGN
"Had she any shame, she would resign."
With those words Wednesday morning, the New York Observer -- newspaper of
record to Manhattan's intelligensia -- became the first major publication to
suggest that the corruption now coming to light in the Clintons'
pardons-for-cash scandal makes it untenable for Hillary Rodham Clinton to
continue serving as New York State's junior U.S. Senator.
"With the nation and indeed the world watching, we (New Yorkers) entrusted
her with the U.S. Senate seat once held by Robert F. Kennedy and Daniel
Patrick Moynihan," the Observer says in its scathing editorial this week.
"It is clear now that we have made a terrible mistake, for Hillary Rodham
Clinton is unfit for elective office. Had she any shame, she would resign.
If federal officeholders were subject to popular recall, she'd be thrown out
of office by springtime, the season of renewal."
The paper warns that the Clintons are banking on the short memories of the
electorate; that even now Bill and Hillary are plotting their return to
respectability -- biding their time till the latest scandal blows over and
they can return to power.
"Only two months ago, serious people believed that Mrs. Clinton would be a
candidate for President in 2004." Now, says the Observer, even the Clintons'
staunchest supporters must realize those hopes have been "relegated to
history's dustbin."
But, the liberal weekly warns, "They have fooled the public before. They
believe they can do so again.... And so it will be up to New York, finally,
to foil the calculations of this coarse and manipulative couple."
X X X X X
Clinton Corruption Plays Us for Fools—We Won’t Forget
Some day soon, public interest in the Clinton administration’s final
disgrace will fade, and the former President—if not his wife, our junior
Senator—will retreat from the headlines. Then, after an appropriate
interval, we will start seeing phony photo ops and pious public
pronouncements. Here and there, the Clintons will begin their latest
rehabilitation: Here is the junior Senator, hugging inner-city children;
there is the former President, lecturing his successor on the finer points
of statecraft.
Just as surely as Richard Nixon began planning his comeback on the airplane
that took him to San Clemente on Aug. 9, 1974, the Clintons even now are
preparing their future public-relations assault on the nation’s better
nature. They assume—regrettably, not without reason—that the American public
in general, and New York voters in particular, will forget about the pardons
and the denials and the bald-faced lies that have sickened even their most
stalwart apologists.
They assume that disgust will run its course, that salvation will be found
in short attention spans, that the hyperactivity of the media age will
continue to blur collective memory. And if that doesn’t work, well, they
figure they can rely on this heavily Democratic state to swallow whole their
claims to political victimhood. If public memory cannot be manipulated,
there’s always the crass pandering that has served them so well in the past:
The former President will walk the length of 125th Street to remind his
putative neighbors that he was, after all, the first black President; the
junior Senator will hold news conferences to denounce right-wing
conspirators. This combination of cold-blooded racial politics and partisan
hatemongering, the Clintons no doubt believe, will keep New York pliant. And
New York is the key to it all: Without New York, there is no Senate seat,
there is no imperial post-Presidency, there is no access to the courtiers
who can, with words, actions and money, douse the dealings of grifters with
the perfume of public service.
So the Clintons are playing New Yorkers for fools. Although they surely know
by now that their actions and their words have offended even their own
supporters in the state they laughingly call home, they see no reason to
panic. Mrs. Clinton is in the first weeks of a six-year term of office; in
2006, they believe, who in New York will remember Marc Rich or Hugh Rodham?
Who will remember the White House furniture that found its way to their
living room in Chappaqua?
And so it will be up to New York, finally, to foil the calculations of this
coarse and manipulative couple. New Yorkers now have an obligation, not only
to themselves but to the nation: They must remember. They must remember
exactly how they feel about the Clintons at this moment, exactly how they
felt when their junior Senator claimed she didn’t know that her own brother
was bidding for pardons from her husband. They must remember how their
stomachs turned when their junior Senator professed to be “heartbroken”
about her brother’s rancid involvement in the great pardon auction. They
must remember their astonishment when Mrs. Clinton claimed to know nothing
about the Rich pardon, even though his ex-wife Denise donated more than
$100,000 to the former First Lady’s Senate campaign—not to mention the $1.1
million that Ms. Rich has given the national Democratic Party, and the
$450,000 she gave to the Clinton Presidential Library.
Mrs. Clinton is heartbroken? She’s always either heartbroken or
disappointed. What about her constituents? Doesn’t she feel our shame? After
all, her husband felt our pain. Does she not understand our embarrassment?
With the nation and indeed the world watching, we entrusted her with the
U.S. Senate seat once held by Robert F. Kennedy and Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
It is clear now that we have made a terrible mistake, for Hillary Rodham
Clinton is unfit for elective office. Had she any shame, she would resign.
If federal officeholders were subject to popular recall, she’d be thrown out
of office by springtime, the season of renewal.
Only two months ago, serious people believed that Mrs. Clinton would be a
candidate for President in 2004. Even true believers—gathered in Manhattan’s
few remaining telephone booths—must admit that the plan to get Mrs. Clinton
back into the White House must now be relegated to history’s dustbin, where
it will share space with the proceedings of the ClintonCare commission,
canceled checks to the Whitewater Development Corporation and the billing
records of the Rose Law Firm. Mrs. Clinton’s political viability has come to
an end after fewer than eight weeks in office.
Unlike the tawdry dealings that led to Bill Clinton’s impeachment, the
pardon scandal implicates Mrs. Clinton as much as, and perhaps even more
than, her husband. After all, it was her brother, not his, who accepted
$400,000 to lobby for pardons for a drug kingpin and a swindler. (Hugh
Rodham says he’ll give the money back—although he hasn’t done it just yet.
Even if he does, the restitution won’t make everything right. Just ask a
bank robber.) The Hasidic village in upstate New Square voted en masse for
her, not him, last fall, after she met with the village’s religious leader.
The pardons for four felons from the village who bilked the federal
government out of $40 million raise questions about her campaign, not his.
It was her campaign treasurer, not his, who helped and advised two of those
felons with their pardon applications.
Mrs. Clinton’s press conference on Feb. 22 was a masterpiece of evasion—so
much so that she deserves a new (if you’ll forgive us) moniker: “Slick
Hillie.” She said she knew nothing about the pardons. She said she knew
nothing of her brother’s involvement. No, no—she didn’t concern herself with
these little matters, because she was very busy preparing to represent the
people of New York. If we had any questions about the pardons, she said, we
ought to ask him, the “him” in question being her husband.
A move worthy of the Big He himself.
The Clintons have spent the last eight years treating the American
electorate with dismissive contempt. The rage unleashed in the last few
weeks is that of an aggrieved partner who has wised up at last. The
President’s supporters in politics and the press understood all along that
they were in a high-risk relationship, but they had persuaded themselves
that, in his heart, Mr. Clinton loved what they loved. Their devotion only
deepened when they were warned to be wary of him; his enemies were their
enemies, too.
Now, with Mr. Clinton stripped of the power and protection of the
Presidency, his supporters see him exactly as he is. And the image that
presents itself is terrifyingly close to the caricature his enemies drew of
him. They were right, after all. Mr. Clinton was, in fact, an untrustworthy
low-life who used people for his own purposes and then discarded them. How
could they have been fooled so badly?
Even now, some continue to delude themselves. They attack Mr. Clinton’s
actions, but they can’t bring themselves to admit that Senator Hillary also
is at fault. Most of us, however, now realize that she is an equally
detestable partner in a scandal whose sleazy dealings finally have been
brought to light.
Conservative critics of the Clintons have been amused to see the former
President’s friends writhing in agony on talk shows and in op-ed columns in
recent weeks. They wonder why other Democrats and liberal commentators are
so angry. It’s not as though the Clintons have suddenly become something
they’re not; they’ve been selling their principles to the highest bidder for
years. It’s not as though they’ve betrayed their core values; what core
values did they ever have?
What the critics—understandably satisfied to see their judgment confirmed
yet again—miss is the amount of self-loathing in the Clinton pile-on.
Pro-Clinton commentators and colleagues now realize just how much they
compromised, just how much they excused, just how ridiculous they looked in
their defense of this corrupt couple. The end of the Clinton Presidency and
the beginning of another Bush era has inspired a round of reflection, and
Clinton supporters find they can’t look at themselves in the mirror.
They are ashamed of themselves, which is a good deal more than anybody can
say of the Clintons. Indeed, they remain smug and self-righteous, certain
that New York will forget the early weeks of 2001, certain that New York
will embrace its junior Senator once again.
They have fooled the public before. They believe they can do so again.
Let’s hope that this time, they are wrong. |
