Will The Real Hillary Please Stand Up?

Oh, wait - it is the same Hillary we have known and respected for all of these years. Yes, she has been pretty consistent in her positions for years now, not that you would know it from how Obama, the DNC, and the MSM have treated her.

One of my favorite writers is Anna Quindlen. Not only has she written some mighty fine novels, but she has great commentaries every other week in Newsweek (I know - I can hardly believe they still have her there either since they became an Obama mouthpiece). Quindlen is also a big Hillary supporter, smart woman that she is. I came across one of her older pieces today, THE SAME OLD (NEW) HILLARY: AFTER YEARS OF FREE-FLOATING PROPAGANDA, HER COLLEAGUES ARE ASTONISHED TO DISCOVER THAT SHE IS COLLABORATIVE AND CONGENIAL. It is a prescient piece in terms of the issues raised in this primary. From the outset, it addresses faith - something people, okay, Obama trolls, have claimed Clinton has talked up since she decided to run for president. Those of us who have followed her career knew this wasn't true, but hey - what do we know? A lot, apparently:

In 1992 I spent part of the day with the wife of the putative Democratic candidate for president. We covered the issues, the campaign and her husband's plans for the future. And we talked about faith, about how both of us believed our religion had led us toward a heightened interest in various social-welfare issues.

That's the real Hillary Rodham Clinton. A lifelong Methodist, she's as reticent about her faith as a Sunday-school teacher--and she once did teach an adult class, back in Arkansas. Yet recently when she's mentioned God, knowing snickers have erupted. Ultraconservative pooh-bah Gary Bauer was quoted as saying it was "the ultimate makeover."

Then there have been the constant attacks we have all heard about her going into the Senate - no way people were going to work with her, especially Republicans, she was a dragon lady, etc., etc. Well, nothing has been further from the truth:

Actually, a makeover has been underway since the former First Lady went to Washington under her own steam as a senator. It's just not the one Bauer means. People are finally seeing past the stereotypes and fabrications. In New York state her approval rating is just shy of 70 percent. After years of free-floating propaganda, her colleagues in the Senate are astonished to discover she is collaborative and congenial. "Those people wanted to hate Hillary so bad," Harry Reid said when she visited Nevada. How disappointing: she's likable, not to mention smart and hardworking.

Well, no kidding. Yes, she seems to be "likable" enough. And she has worked her heart out on the issues that affect real people's lives - veterans, those with HIV/AIDS, women, not JUST since she became a senator, but for her entire adult working life. For over 30 years. But hey, some folks don't worry about letting facts influence their opinions:

The so-called Hillary truth squad is ratcheting up again for her re-election race in 2006 and the widely rumored run for the presidency in 2008, suggesting that on all kinds of issues the senator is changing her tune to a hummable version of "Hail to the Chief." The truth is that she is now who she has always been. The suggestion that common ground needs to be found on abortion, common ground around better access to contraception, is nothing new. Her concern that the culture is deadening our kids to sex and violence has been one that she has discussed before.

Consider these sentiments:

"Our ancestors did not have to think about many of the issues we are now confronted with. When does life start, when does life end? Who makes those decisions? How do we dare to infringe upon these areas of such delicate, difficult questions? And yet, every day in hospitals and homes and hospices all over this country, people are struggling with those very profound issues."

If the senator had made those comments last week, every story about them would suggest positioning for the presidency. But they are taken from a speech delivered 12 years ago, a speech in which she spoke of a "spiritual vacuum" that government cannot begin to answer, of the thirst to "feel that we are part of something bigger than ourselves."

Say what? She's been saying the same thing for the past 15 years (this article was written in 2005)?? How DARE she!!! Why, doesn't she know she is supposed to change her positions whenever the wind blows? Especially if it involves important matters like health care?? Oh, oh - better, yet - if it involves shredding the Constitution, now THAT'S a good one on which to change up! Yippee!! What kind of politician IS this woman, anyway?!? Quindlen continues:

A stroll down the memory lane of news clippings shows pundits didn't know what to make of that speech. It conflicted with the chilly-Hillary iconography that reporters reflexively adopted, big government combined with the ever-popular secular humanism and a healthy dose of dragon lady. Occasionally there was the obligatory counterstory--She's warm! She's funny! She prays!--culminating after her election in the breathless report that her Senate colleagues liked her. Now, however, the monorail is back on track. No matter what she says, no matter how long she's been saying it, everything will be refracted through the lens of a run for the White House.

Like most complex and intelligent people, the senator is difficult to categorize neatly: idealist and pragmatist both, a person who believes in personal freedom and personal responsibility, a moderate described as a liberal and reviled as a radical. This makes her like so many who reject either/or, who believe in both strong families and good day care, both prenatal care and the morning-after pill. It has also made it easy to demonize her by those who prefer black and white to gray (and any man to a strong woman). An article she wrote about the rights of children in fractious families was twisted into the allegation that she thought kids should be able to divorce their parents. The suicide of her friend Vince Foster was wreathed in fringe-group suggestions of murder. If the woman cured cancer, there would be complaints that she'd ignored heart disease. And not just from the right. Within her own party, power brokers suggest that she is too polarizing, too hated, to run for president. You could say exactly the same about George W. Bush, but no one said he shouldn't stay in the race because he was reviled or divisive.

Oh, heck no - men don't have to get out if they are perceived as divisive, or polarizing or whatever. And here's the thing - Bush WAS divisive and polarizing, just like Obama is. The only thing that is polarizing about Clinton is the Right Wing Smear Machine that has painted her as such, a machine the Obama Campaign took over, being the good Democrats they are (cough, choke). By all means, use the Right Wing's taking points against one of your own who has worked her heart out to serve the people. What an upstanding thing to do - not.

See, if the Obama camp, or the Right Wingers, didn't smear Clinton with false characterizations, they'd be in a world of hurt, and they know it:

Here's a sense of what happens when people pay attention to the real Hillary Rodham Clinton. In New York state, which consists not only of the city but also of a whole lot of upstate counties not so different from Nebraska, close to one out of three residents had a negative opinion of her three years ago; today that figure is down to almost one in five. If she can't become the first female president, it ought to be because voters reject what she really believes, what she really stands for, what her real plans for the future may be, not because they got suckered by a smear machine or easy oversimplification. In that 1993 speech she spoke of changing the national ethos to the golden rule, so Americans "truly begin to try to see other people as they wish to be seen and to treat them as they wish to be treated." Perhaps there she was being prescient.

No FREAKIN' KIDDING! "See people as they wish to be seen, and treat them as they wish to be treated." Huh. Now there's a concept. And no wonder the DNC, Obama and the Right Wingers are scared to death of this woman - her brilliance, her competence, her commitment to serve all put her in a league of her own.

And speaking of that - while Obama is out sticking his foot/feet in his mouth, twisting this way and that, shredding the Bill of Rights, and WORMing on everything under the sun, Senator Clinton continues to do the work of the people. Yesterday, she spoke at a rally on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, a bill she sponsored. In case you are unfamiliar with bill, it is based on a real case:

Lilly Ledbetter, whose Supreme Court case led to the reversal of decades of precedent in wage discrimination cases, spoke of her hope that the bill will become law so that women in the future will have the ability to seek the redress that the Supreme Court denied her. Ledbetter worked for Goodyear for 19 years before discovering that she was paid significantly less than her male counterparts with the same or less experience. The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the complaint had to be filed within 180days of the initial salary decision even if the victim is unaware of the discrimination until much later...The intent of this bill is to provide more effective remedies to victims of wage discrimination based on gender. It also amends the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to require the EEOC to collect wage data based on gender.

But that's not all. She also had a number of amendments added, and passed, to (t)he Tom Lantos and Henry J. Hyde United States Global Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Reauthorization Act of 2008
That's just been in the past couple of days.

I think we can ask Obama, in the immortal words of Janet Jackson, "What Have You Done For Me Lately?" I know the answer to that - lied, and lied, and lied...

So, here is yet another damn wake up call to the Superdelegates. PAY ATTENTION, already!! Enough with the head in the sand crapola - grow a spine, think for yourselves, stop letting yourselves be bullied by the Obama thugs and the DNC hacks. Seriously. Act like adults. And pick the adult to be the Democratic nominee - the one who can play well with others; can think for herself; has integrity; can make a well-informed decision, and stick with it; is constant; and who truly cares about the people to whom she has devoted her life. THAT is who we need now, not the spoiled brat adolescent who wants everything without having to work for it, and who cannot take a stand to save his, or anyone's, life. Please. Get with it, SDs. Earn your title.