After learning that the Republicans were dumping Trent Lott as Majority Leader in the Senate, Hillary Clinton commented, “What [Lott] did was state publicly what many of them [i.e. Republicans] have stated privately over many years in the back roads and back streets of the South.”
How does she know this? Senator Clinton provides no evidence to back up her claim. Just imagine, for a moment, if a prominent conservative U.S. Senator had accused all liberals of glorifying criminals and terrorists on the back streets of Ivy League campuses. It would be a media firestorm unlike anything you have ever seen.
Mrs. Clinton’s comment reveals both her prejudice and intellectual bankruptcy. Her visceral prejudice is proven by the fact that she lumps Senator Lott in a group with all Republicans, meaning: anyone who fails to agree with her and her party. Her intellectual bankruptcy is proven by the fact that she (like her party) has no ideas of her own. Granted, the Republican party articulates only a few ideas and rarely stands up for them, but increasingly the few ideas that do come out of Washington DC (pre-emptive strikes against terrorist and rogue states; partial privatization of Social Security; welfare reduction; tax cuts) flow from the Republican Party, not the Democratic Party. Because Mrs. Clinton’s party presently offers no ideas — other than to preserve and protect the welfare-regulatory state status quo at all costs — they are left to insinuate that anyone associated in any way with Republicanism/conservatism/nonliberalism is really, at heart, a racist. It’s the oldest philosophical and psychological trick there is: distract someone from your own obvious flaws by putting them on the defensive with an outrageous, unfounded and prejudiced claim.
In actuality, a racist is someone who elevates race above individual merit, achievement or character. Mrs. Clinton fails to mention that Senator Lott proved himself a racist in two respects, not one. One was his clear sympathy for the past segregationist candidacy of Strom Thurmond. The second evidence of Senator Lott’s racism was his pledge for “across the board” support of affirmative action — a policy clearly based on favoring one race over another for reasons unrelated to personal ability, and a policy which liberals like Hillary Clinton overwhelmingly support. The Democrats will reply that Senator Lott’s sudden conversion to affirmative action was insincere because of the threat to his job as Majority Leader. However, conversions are easy to make when they are consistent with the basic premises you already hold. If you’re at heart a racist of the Strom Thurmond variety, how much of a leap is it to become a racist of the Hillary Clinton/Ted Kennedy/Al Sharpton variety?
It seems that Senator Clinton is a bit bitter. Bitter people can’t and won’t promote their own ideas. They won’t take responsibility, even to the extent that Senator Lott did, for advocating their actual ideas (ideas which are right or wrong, foolish or wise).
One of the reasons people like Hillary Clinton come across as so bitter is that they have nothing to offer, and they’re smart enough to know it. For a woman like Hillary Clinton, whom I suspect craves power like you or I could never begin to imagine, it’s particularly frustrating. Her life has been one huge compromise — against feminism (by defending her sexually predatory husband); against welfare statism (by allowing her husband to sign off on welfare reform and capital gains tax cuts); and even against her youthful inclinations as a limited government/Barry Goldwater/Ayn Rand fan.
All this compromise has been in the pursuit of one thing only: power. She wants power from the people and over the people, but there’s only one problem: the people keep demanding ideas. She’s afraid to articulate her real ideas, of course, because if she did she would end up like she did after her infamous 1994 health care debacle. So Hillary, like her supporters throughout the country, are left with a single emotion and a single policy: bitterness.
What happens if someone like this ever gains real power?
