Clinton-Hatred in Its Doldrums
David Weigel | October 3, 2007, 8:54am
Two of the biggest magazines of the right have prominent anti-Clinton content up today: Great examples, I think, of how Clinton hatred has vaporized as a political or satirical force and slow how the institutional right has been picking this up. First we've got
George H. Wittman's American Spectator column on the Clinton Global Initiative.
Clinton Global Initiative is a pretentiously named mechanism...
"Clinton Global Initiative" is a pretentious name? Under what definition of "pretentious"? A pretentious name would be "Clinton: An Initiative," or maybe simply "BJC."
Other than having a keen desire to avoid military service in Vietnam, and a penchant during his year in Oxford, England for the town's pubs, Bill Clinton showed no previous interest in world affairs until becoming president.
But this is just calumny. Clinton obviously has
some interest in world affairs after eight years in the White House, right? Shouldn't he?
Ms. Jolie usually doesn't need to go to these do's with her muscular mate, but this was, after all, a William Jefferson Clinton occasion and even though the beauteous and bright Ms. Jolie can karate kick quite well, the Clinton reputation for aggressive action with the opposite sex could not be ignored.
And so on. Meanwhile,
National Review is raising money in a
"Help Us Stop Hillary!" telethon. No engagement with the Democratic frontrunner's campaign, no attempt to understand the popularity comeback of her and her husband: Just a lot of nostalgiac outrage.
Bob | October 3, 2007, 12:19pm | #
" Meanwhile, National Review is raising money in a "Help Us Stop Hillary!" telethon. No engagement with the Democratic frontrunner's campaign, no attempt to understand the popularity comeback of her and her husband: Just a lot of nostalgiac outrage."
I have become used to this site, the torchbearer for an increasingly irrelevant political party, smearing people with whom it disagrees, but your trend of holding water for the Democratic candidates is disturbing, particularly given the statism of the Democratic frontrunners. Your increasingly frequent criticisms of leading Republican candidates and your utter lack of criticism and frequent defense of the most statist Democratic candidates is mind-boggling.
Now you have resulted to outright falsehoods to try to make your "points".
One merely has to peruse National Review's website for about 5 seconds to see article after artice concerning the policy positions of Hillary Clinton and numerous discussions concerning her popularity. But Hit & Run has never let facts stand in its way, and given the snarky tone of the above article, it probably never will.
Futhermore the comment about "nostalgic outrage" is just plain silly. Evidently when considering her fitness for president, the things she did in the past and the policy positions she took while her husband was in office are somehow irrelevant, at least that seems to be what you are saying. If such is the case, I expect to see no more articles on this website concerning her failed attempt to bring socialized medicine to this country.
I guess evidence of her questionable ethics, such as Whitewater and her seeming expertise in the futures market is totally irrelevant and speaks nothing of her character and fitness for the highest office in the United States and "leader of the free world".
The notion that such things should be off-limits in a serious debate, as implied by the term "nostalgic outrage" is not just silly, it's stupid.
If Jimmy Carter were running for president, I guess National review should never discuss his botched handling of the Iranian hostage crisis, the situation in Afghanistan, the energy crisis, his ridiculous "malaise comments" etc. lest they be accused of "nostalgic outrage". It would be obvious to anyone with half a brain such a position is ridiculous, hence your problem, I suppose.
What's even worse is the rank hypocrisy of this site, or the very least of the author of this piece. If I had a nickel for every article or thread on this message board that stirred up "nostalgic outrage" against Rudy Giuliani, I would be a very wealthy man.
Rattlesnake Jake | October 3, 2007, 5:07pm | #
"That federal receipts dropped so low after Reagan's first tax cut that he had to implement the largest tax increase in American history to plug up the hole in the deficit."
What I was talking about was stimulating the economy, not raising revenue.
"That the American economy did even better after Clinton's tax hike, not worse, as the supply-siders predicted."
It didn't do better because of Clinton's tax hike. It did alright in spite of Clinton's tax hike. As Cesar pointed out, the economy was driven because of the high tech industries.
"the Bush tax cuts really did blow another hole in the budget, without any noticeable effect on the economy."
There is a noticeable effect on the economy, a great improvement, lower unemployment. The problem is regarding the hole in the budget, that Congress has been spending like a drunken sailor and Bush has allowed them to.
"He would have if his socialized medicine scheme had become law. True, but he would have been using money that was already going into the health care system. The re-labelling of pay check deductions and corporate insurance bills would not have had a serious effect on the economy."
Oh, contrare! When people feel like they are getting something for free, they tend to overuse. Health care costs would have spiraled out of control and would have led to higher taxes to pay for them which would eventually have led to rationing of services when people started complaining about the high taxes.
"How? By reducing the deficit, then eliminating it, then allowing surpluses to pay down the existing debt."
Once again, the deficit was reduced through greater revenue created by the high tech industry. Clinton had nothing to do with it, although Democrats are quick to take credit for it.
