Sunday Editorial: Hillary and Self-Inflicted Wounds

Hillary Clinton has now uttered the sound bite of the 2008 election cycle,

a comment that shall shadow her in the pages of history.

Asked by South Dakota’s Sioux Falls Argus Leader newspaper about calls for her to drop out of the race, Clinton (D-N.Y.) said: “My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. You know I just, I don’t understand it.”

The deep seated distrust of Hillary Clinton that has been just below the media veneer of the campaign that has all along prevented her planned and self-expected coronation as “The First Woman President” has surfaced slowly as deceit and desperation turned racist and divisive; now the deepest suspicions of duplicitous motives has been revealed.

The real problem for Hillary Clinton from the very outset has not been gender, not the supposed sexists of the media; no, the problem has been the fact that half the country can’t stand her or trust a word she says. That baggage surfaced in the earliest of private polls and the campaign was well aware of it. Given those facts the deceit and lies of the Clinton Campaign became daily operating tools.

Was the tearing up in New Hampshire real or fake? Did she “somehow” come to believe there really had been sniper fire in Bosnia, or did she just tell the same lie over and over again in an attempt to cultivate a “brave warrior” image?

Are all these gaffes accidental or calculated, sincere or strategized, focus-grouped and poll-driven, like every move made - right down to summer vacation locales - by that her, lip-biting, silky-smooth-operator husband of hers, Bill? America holds Bill in ambivalent reverence, and are comfortable with his departure from the Oval Office and do not welcome his return to the environment.

Still, many could have bought her line, many want to - that this was just another late-in-the-day mistake, but this is entirely too much.

And when you look closer at her excuse, it doesn’t wash; they never do. The all too familiar pattern emerges: deception on deception.

Hillary later explained the “assassination” remark by claiming, “The Kennedys have been much on my mind the last days” because of Senator Ted Kennedy’s brain cancer diagnosis. Yet she said more or less the same thing in March, to Time magazine, when Senator Kennedy was not, presumably, on her mind.

“Primary contests used to last a lot longer. We all remember the great tragedy of Bobby Kennedy being assassinated in June in L.A. My husband didn’t wrap up the nomination in 1992 until June,” she told Time.

“Having a primary contest go through June is nothing particularly unusual,” she said.

When you look closer again, here remarks are not true, again.

Bill Clinton’s primary race was essentially over in March, when Paul Tsongas dropped out and Clinton faced no serious opposition.

As for Bobby Kennedy’s candidacy, it was not a long national soap opera. No, RFK won his first primary May 7 and was murdered four weeks later.

In fact this whole idea we’ve heard endlessly from Hillary - that primaries routinely run from January through June - is simply not true. We have had enough of lie and misrepresentations with Bush, and we do not have to tolerate the same nonsense from Hillary.

In her mind and the minds of her handlers the democrats were destined to sweep in the white house, and Hillary was prepared with the cash, contributions and purchase of every democrat party consultant and analyst money could buy. She collected and closeted them so no opponent could avail themselves of their services.

It was to be a celebratory coronation campaign of the first woman president.

Over confidence, miscalculation and denial within the Hillary Parlor clique was quickly unveiled. They believed their own spin line and were prepared to simply wear down all comers and bury them in money without any regard for what the American people were really looking for, what the American people really needed, and somehow they didn’t feel the delegate selection process was important enough to ever grasp, process and plan for the new formulas within the party.

And now we are expected accept all her exhortations that the rules broken by the state parties of Florida and Michigan should be ignored and decided in her favor. Do rules mean anything to anyone one? Do they mean anything to Hillary? If not do the laws of this land mean anything to her? They don't to Bush and we have had more than enough of that!

Now let me point out here: None of this means I think she actually wants somebody to off Obama. Lord, I hope not.

Remember seeing Obama at a rally in New Hampshire, jogging up to the stage, the screams and blaring Springsteen music, the electricity, the mania, really? It seems like a million years ago. It was January. Anyway, it strikes me and the people there in an instant. This guy is a phenomenon. Phenomenons get the nuts going. Something could happen to this guy.

The thought is so horrific yet so possible you only whispered it to yourself, then you stop, lest thinking it make it real.

A little voice just goes off in your brain warning, no, no, don’t even dare. Here’s the kindest spin I can put on this mess: Hillary’s so lost, she can’t hear that little voice anymore. She hears only her own voice, and that is at the root of all of her egomaniac problems.

Hillary has unleashed the racists of this nation, made them in the code words of “white working class” a polling component and anointing them with validation and legitimacy. That for a presidential candidate is unacceptable!

All attempts at apology, spin explanation and dismissal as an “unfortunate gaffe” will be as despicable as her original utterance and amount to nothing more than an another attempt to salvage her obsession for the White House and spin doctoring manipulation of the American people. It is over Hillary.

Hillary Clinton has become an embarrassment to our party. She has disgraced both the party and herself. Any arguments of Sexism in the voters of this land now ring hollow. The question is no longer “Hillary a Woman”; the question is now clearly the content of her character and her state of mind.

Her Campaign has pandered to and profited from the “Dark Angels” of Racism is America, and now her mere mention of the word “Assassination” in conjunction with Barack Obama reveals a character flaw and mental aberration so abhorrent as to render her unfit to be the President of this nation and the standard bearer, or a member of the ticket, of our party.

I know it is difficult for many women of this nation to accept Hillary’s ultimate demise, and I understand that are willing in the spirit an cause of The “Emily List” folks to forgive almost anything, but I have a problem with their advocacy at some turns.

We do not need to elect women.

We do not need to elect men.

We do do need to elect man and women or integrity dedicated to the welfare of the people of this nation, the restoration of our Constitutional structure of government, people of integrity of character, intelligence and statesmanship.

Just because the men who have held the majority of offices for so long have done such a piss poor job of it in the last 50 years does not mean that women should automatically be given a pass to act in the same manner.

Neither should be tolerated.

Hillary has failed the test.

Pelosi has failed the test.

Sibelius does not have the fire and intelligence to be promoted any further.

Those failures are not failures of women. They are failures of those individuals. We have to stop making excuses and allowances for our leaders for any reason…like it or not!

It is time for her to withdraw and leave the final judgment of her fitness to hold any political office in this land to the voters of New York. She has disgraced herself, the party, and the women of this land who have supported her and have held high the hope that Hillary could break the great “Glass Ceiling” to the Oval Office.

She has not will not break that ceiling; instead she has shattered a dream!