Say Anything Blog

More than three years ago, it was obvious that Hillary Clinton had decided that her best strategy in pursuing the White House was to portray herself as a “moderate,” much as her sometime husband Bill had done in 1992. At the time, though, she had no way of knowing that the Democrat party would itself veer so dramatically to the Left, that even her faux moderation would become a point of grievous contention to party elders and ideological fellow travelers across the country.

Six weeks ago, safely ensconced in a second 6 year term as NY Senator and sitting on a substantial campaign war chest, she started her carefully crafted journey back leftward, away from the center and back to the ideological heart and soul of the party’s money changers and apparatchiks.

With that in mind, I find this USA Today article intriguing. Not for what it says has happened, but for what it intimates will happen.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and two other lawmakers are headed to Iraq this weekend as Congress engages in fierce debate over President Bush’s plan to send 21,500 more troops to salvage the U.S. effort there.

Clinton, a Democrat from New York who is considering running for president, is traveling with Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., who had also eyed the 2008 race but opted out, and Rep. John McHugh, a Republican from upstate New York.

The three, all members of armed services committees, are to meet with top Iraqi officials and U.S. military commanders. The trip also takes them to Afghanistan.

“This was the first opportunity we had to be able to go because of the long weekend, and it turns out that the timing is propitious because of the president’s plans,” said Clinton, who opposes Bush’s plan to send more U.S. troops to Iraq…

Although she opposes more U.S. troops for Iraq, Clinton wants to see more troops in Afghanistan, where “we seem to be on autopilot,” she said.

“I wish we were discussing additional troops for Afghanistan. We are hearing increasingly troubling reports out of Afghanistan and we will be searching for accurate information about the true state of affairs both militarily and politically,” she said.

Despite the gratuitous “fact-finding” endorsement of the press, this trip is the cover under which Senator Clinton will move farther and farther to the left, distancing herself from the war she has endorsed from the beginning, and, hopefully, endearing herself to those Democrats who hold the key to the 2008 presidential nomination. That the trip comes immediately after the President’s major speech on Iraq two nights ago is no fortuitous accident, but a deliberate ploy by Clinton to highlight her coming epiphany on the War in Iraq.

Incidentally, the USA Today article’s reference to Afghanistan is interesting because that country will provide Clinton with the moderate crutch she’ll need to slide back to the center in time for the 2008 general election… IF she can manage to get the nomination in the first place.

No one on the hard, anti-war Left is paying any sort of attention to Afghanistan… or Iran, or Lebanon, or Tunisia, or Somalia or the Philippines or Libya. In a way, the anti-war left has as much invested ideologically in their position on Iraq as the US has invested in seeing the Iraq project through to a successful conclusion.

Apparently those on the Left simply haven’t got the vision to see beyond the next election cycle. That an operation in Somalia or Tunisia might prevent the next attack on a western airliner or embassy, or close the book on the last one, is of no consequence to the current crop of flower children.

A major shift in a strategic position can be tricky to say the least. Especially to someone not noted for their dexterity and balance (John Kerry’s infamous before and after votes come to mind here.)

It will be interesting to see if Hillary can actually pull this off. I’m betting that she can’t. There will be no more Clinton presidencies.