Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Let this be our mantra
James Taranto writes that Hillary Clinton is the person at this moment most likely to be our next President, if for no other reason than the odds are higher for her than any other individual. He makes some fine observations, then closes with this:
Republican loathing could well help her in the general election too. As we argued throughout last year's campaign, partisan loathing for President Bush was a hindrance to Democrats. They mistook their emotions for facts, which made them overconfident. They thought running a totally negative campaign would be sufficient; it didn't occur to them that doing so reflected badly on them, not on Bush. If Hillary Clinton is the nominee in 2008, Republicans run the risk of repeating these mistakes.His comments hit me like an epiphany from on high. He is exactly right, and conservatives would do well to repeat this for the next three-and-a-half years: Do not let our hatred of Mme. Hillary get in the way. She is a loathsome figure, but just saying she is a loathsome figure is not going to defeat her. I firmly believe that the vitriol spewed at President Bush for over four years actually did more in the long-run to help him because it turned off a good number of moderates. Many of us like to deride the public as stupid, but they are not as foolish as we like to think, and many want to hear substance over simple-minded venemous comments directed at the opposition. Thus those of us on the right would do well to keep that in mind and refrain from overstepping the bounds of decent rhetoric. There is enough there substantively to defeat Hillary, we need not delve too deeply into lampoonish caricatures that only make her slightly more sympathetic to the public.
# posted by Paul Zummo : 4:22 PM
