Tag Archives: Hillary Clinton

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Cruz upset we haven’t caught Benghazi terrorists

Right-wing politicians and their pals in the right-wing media just won’t let the flames from Benghazi smolder and die.

Benghazi refers to the U.S. consulate in Libya that was attacked on Sept. 11, 2011. Four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya. It was a terrible event. The right wingers keep stirring the pot looking for things to hang on Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was then secretary of state and is a possible candidate for president in 2016.

Then comes Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to weigh in today on the Fox News Channel. I caught a snippet of the interview today on TV while at work. He was offering up the usual stuff about accountability and trying to assess blame on Clinton over her department’s response to the chaos that erupted in the Libyan city.

Then he made the one point that caught my attention: He’s upset that “17 months to the day we haven’t yet brought the terrorists responsible for the attack to justice.”

Seventeen months later and we still haven’t caught the bad guys. Does that really upset you, Sen. Cruz?

Allow me to put this into a little different perspective.

Osama bin Laden plotted the attacks that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001, nine months into George W. Bush’s presidency. U.S. forces went to war the following month in Afghanistan. We looked for bin Laden and nearly had him in Tora Bora. He got away.

Then, after President Bush had left the White House, U.S. intelligence analysts located bin Laden in Pakistan. Nearly 10 years after the 9/11 attack, President Barack Obama ordered a team of Navy SEALs, CIA operatives and Army Special Forces pilots into Pakistan to kill the terrorist mastermind.

They did the deed.

It took a long while, nearly a decade.

I’m pretty sure we’ll get the individuals responsible for the Benghazi attack. It’s going to take some time. That’s how meticulous intelligence-gathering works.

Let’s stop the carping, Sen. Cruz.

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‘Carpetbagger’ no longer a four-letter word?

Former Massachusetts U.S. Sen. Scott Brown is considering whether to run for Senate once again.

He might run for a Senate seat in … New Hampshire!

Brown isn’t from the Granite State, which borders Massachusetts. Indeed, one can get from virtually anywhere in Massachusetts to New Hampshire in pretty short order, given that the Bay State is so small in geographical size. For that matter, so are all the New England states.

Is the former senator a carpetbagger?

http://www.rollcall.com/news/scott_brown_bares_all_but_his_senate_intentions-230764-1.html?pos=hftxt

And isn’t it a bad thing to roll into a state, congressional district, legislative district, county commission district — name it — just to win a political office?

The very term “carpetbagger” became known after the American Civil War, when northerners carrying carpet suitcases went south to “reconstruct” the states of the former Confederacy. The term also applied to Republican political appointees who moved south packing the customary sturdy carpetbag luggage that was common in that era.

Well, “carpetbaggers” have moved into states to seek public office and done pretty well.

U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy fought off the carpetbagger charge when he quit President Johnson’s Cabinet to run for the Senate seat in New York in 1964, even though he lived in New York for only briefly when he was a boy. RFK won, served part of his first term, ran for president in 1968 and was killed by an assassin.

Hillary Rodham Clinton had even less familiarity with New York when she ran for the Senate in that state in 2000. She won, was re-elected in 2006, served until 2009, when she became secretary of state in the Obama administration and now appears set to run for president in 2016.

Those are the two more notable examples of “carpetbaggers” who made good.

Right here at home in the Texas Panhandle, we watched a Randall County resident, Victor Leal, move into a rental home in Potter County in late 2009 for the expressed purpose of running for a Texas House seat that included Potter County; his former residence was outside the district. The new Potter County resident lost the GOP primary in 2010. Leal had to fend off questions about his residency, which likely contributed to his defeat.

All in all, though, “carpetbagger” might technically still be a pejorative term but politicians have perfected ways of scooting past the negative implications.

Former Sen. Brown no doubt has his elevator speech lined out if and when the question comes up. He’ll likely be able to say that New Hampshire and Massachusetts are so packed so close together, they share the same media market and they share so many common interests and concerns that living in one state is like living in the other.

Times do change.

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Hey, Sen. Paul, Bill Clinton’s not running for president

Rand Paul needs to break out his copy of the U.S. Constitution and turn to the 22nd Amendment.

It says that no person can serve more than two full terms as president of the United States. Were he to read it again — I’m sure he knows what it says — then he might be brought back to Earth in his budding campaign to become the 45th president.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/02/07/rand-paul-keeps-attacking-bill-clinton-why/

The Kentucky Republican U.S. senator keeps mentioning the 42nd president’s scandalous relationship with a White House intern in the late 1990s, which led to his impeachment by the House of Representatives. He says Democrats cannot claim the mantle of being the Party of the Woman because the president committed a terrible act of sexual harassment against that intern.

Paul also is urging those who took money raised by Clinton should give it back.

Oh, did I mention that Bill Clinton isn’t running for the presidency, that the Constitution forbids the former two-term president from seeking the office?

I also haven’t mentioned — yet — that the ex-president’s wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is a possible candidate for the high office in 2016.

Do you get it? Sen. Paul is seeking to link Hillary Clinton to the misdeeds of her husband — even though Bill Clinton’s popularity has soared into the stratosphere in recent years because of his great work on all kinds of worldwide issues.

Rand Paul is sounding like a fool if he intends to smear the former secretary of state and ex-U.S. senator with that kind of defamatory rhetoric.

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Christie ‘scandal’ getting pretty darn curious

My friends on the right are outraged at the “mainstream media’s” addiction to the Chris Christie “Bridgegate” scandal.

They’d better get used to it, because it doesn’t appear as though it’s going to wither away any time soon.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/01/chris-chris-new-jersey-george-washington-bridge-scandal-david-wildstein-102977.html?hp=t1

A letter has surfaced now that suggests Christie knew at the time that one of his key aides ordered the closing of lanes on the George Washington Bridge, the busiest span in the world — and that it might have been in retaliation for the refusal by Fort Lee, N.J.’s Democratic mayor to endorse the Republican governor’s re-election effort.

The letter’s assertion contradicts Christie’s statement that he didn’t know anything until he read about it in the press.

This is what happens when a high-profile politician who portrays himself in a certain manner is accused of doing things that run counter to that public image. Christie, who many people believe wants to run for president in 2016, has cast himself as a hands-on, no-nonsense chief executive. If that’s the case, then how could he not know that his chief of staff, Bridget Kelly, would order the lanes closed, resulting in a horrendous traffic bottleneck.

Now we learn about alleged misuse of federal relief funds dedicated to help New Jersey residents recover from Superstorm Sandy.

No one has accused Christie of ordering lane shutdown himself. Frankly, I don’t think he would be so stupid.

However, this controversy is beginning to take on a life of its own the way other controversies have grown into full-blown scandals.

Two examples stand out: The Watergate burglary in 1972 turned from a criminal investigation into a constitutional crisis involving presidential abuse of power; Whitewater turned from a probe into Bill and Hillary Clinton’s real estate ventures into a scandal that involved a presidential dalliance with a White House intern and his lying under oath to a federal grand jury about whether he did those nasty things with the young woman.

It’s looking as though, regarding Gov. Christie’s involvement in this bridge lane-closing, that history may be about to repeat itself.

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Is Bill Clinton going to run as well in 2016?

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., may be considering a run for the presidency in 2016, which is partly why he appeared today on “Meet the Press.”

As a potential GOP candidate, therefore, the conversation turned to — who else? — Hillary Rodham Clinton, a possible (if not probable) Democratic candidate for president.

Paul then dropped this little nugget: If the former secretary of state runs, the impeachment of her husband, the former president, could become an issue.

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/rand-paul-women-have-already-won

Interesting, yes?

It’s also a bit of a stretch for those of us who want to judge the former first lady, U.S. senator and chief diplomat on her own merits. Paul sees it differently, which is no surprise. He and those in his party are going to seek every possible advantage they can find — even if they make things up — against the Hillary Juggernaut that could await them in 2016.

Paul said Democrats’ assertion that they are the party that cares about women doesn’t hold true, given President Clinton’s dalliance with a young female intern that led to his impeachment and Senate trial.

“Meet the Press” host David Gregory asked: “Is it something that Hillary Clinton should be judged on if she were a candidate in 2016?” Paul’s response: “Yeah – no, I’m not saying that. This is with regard to the Clintons, and sometimes it’s hard to separate one from the other. But I would say that, with regard to his place in history, that it certainly is a discussion.”

OK, he said “no” after he said “yeah,” meaning that it is an issue.

I would beg to differ. Hillary Clinton has made her mark on U.S. history, first as a U.S. senator from New York who distinguished herself in the eight years she served in that body. Then came her unsuccessful run for the presidency in 2008 in which she gave eventual nominee Barack Obama all he could handle. Then she got the call to become secretary of state in the Obama administration, and she distinguished herself in that service.

She’s a player and a big hitter all on her own.

Whatever her husband did to warrant impeachment should have no little if any bearing on a possible second run for the presidency. She’ll have her own record to defend.

However, as NBC White House correspondent Chuck Todd noted, her task will be to run as “Hillary” not as a “Clinton.” I’m guessing Hillary is going figure it out.

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Obama most admired man in U.S. Who knew?

The Gallup Poll has just released a survey that is going to surprise more than a few folks. It surprised me, for example.

It says President Barack Obama is the most admired man in America — by a comfortable margin at that.

http://www.msnbc.com/hardball/obama-clinton-most-admired-gallup

The most admired woman happens to be former first lady/Sen./Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Why is this so surprising? I see a couple of interesting things here.

The first one is obvious. President Obama has had a rough year, particularly as it relates to the unveiling of the Affordable Care Act. The debut of the ACA was a disaster, technically speaking. The rollout came on top of a barrage of criticism of the ACA from Republicans who managed somehow to win the argument.

Despite all the bad press, the president continues to stand fairly tall in the minds of millions of Americans.

Much the same can be said of Hillary Clinton, who left public office at the beginning of the year as a controversy over her office’s handling of an uprising in Libya drew fire. The consulate in Benghazi was attacked, four Americans died in a ferocious fire fight and Clinton took lots of heat over the way her office handled the initial response.

Yet, for the 12th year in a row, she remains America’s most admired woman.

The second factor is interesting as well, in that Gallup isn’t exactly known for favoring so-called “liberals.” The poll long has been viewed by observers as tilting a tad to the right. Still, the poll is deemed reputable.

The lesson here might only be that we need not pay too much attention to the chattering class that so often seems to outshout the rest of the us.

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Biden or Clinton in ’16? Obama stays mum

President Obama faced a number of pointed questions this week in an interview with Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s “Hardball.”

The most pointed query was one he wouldn’t dare answer. Who’d make the better president: Joe Biden or Hillary Rodham Clinton?

Obama begged off.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/192274-biden-or-clinton-not-a-chance-i-am-going-there-says-obama

You’d better get used to it, Mr. President. The media are going to try to get you to answer a question you say you won’t touch with mile-long pole.

The president surely anticipated the question from Matthews. He seemed ready.

They both would bring strength to the White House, Obama said. He said Vice President Biden has been at his side for every key decision. The president said Clinton has earned her place among the top secretaries of state in the nation’s history.

Yes, the president has some hurdles to clear before he starts planning his exit and deliberates over how — or whether — he should campaign for his successor.

I’m not expecting the national media to let up, though, in pursuing angles looking for clues on whom the president prefers: Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton.

The constant hectoring over that issue might drive the president even nuttier than his dealings with congressional Republicans.

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Women lead the way for Democrats

Juan Williams, writing for The Hill newspaper, says that women might be the saviors for the Democratic Party.

I scanned through the piece and noticed a critical omission: no mention of Texas.

Take a look:

http://thehill.com/opinion/juan-williams/191675-juan-williams-dems-are-now-party-of-women

Williams, a frequent contributor for the Fox News Channel (as one of the network’s handful of token liberals), looks at the rise across the nation of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and of course former first lady/Sen./Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

These all are legitimate powerhouses on the national political stage.

However, out here in Texas there is another possible surge in the making — courtesy of women.

State Sens. Wendy Davis and Leticia Van de Putte are running for Texas governor and lieutenant governor, respectively. They both are being seen by the state Democratic establishment as being critical to their party’s possible resurgence.

Is it probable? Well, many experts around Texas don’t think so. Republicans have cemented their grip on the state’s political infrastructure. They occupy every statewide office and they keep winning with impressive margins. The state has gone through a fundamental political personality transformation since, oh, about 1978, when it elected its first GOP governor since Reconstruction. It’s been downhill ever since for the Texas Democratic Party.

Davis and Van de Putte, though, represent two key constituencies that Democrats will need. Women — of course — and Hispanics, given Van de Putte’s ethnic heritage. The Hispanic vote remains solidly Democratic in Texas, although Gov. Rick Perry has fared well among that group of voters in recent election cycles. Perry, though, is not running. That creates a significant opening for Hispanic activists to get out the vote.

The female vote centers on abortion rights. The Texas GOP has enacted strict rules prohibiting a woman’s right end a pregnancy. That battle in the Legislature propelled Davis to the national stage earlier this year. Davis certainly cannot run on that issue alone, but the passion she stirred among women across the state could serve as a key driver in her bid to become governor next year.

I am not predicting a victory for Democrats next year. I am hopeful, though, that renewed interest in the two Democratic candidates at the top of the state’s ballot can create buzz among voters and deliver a lively campaign that requires Republicans to explain themselves as they campaign across the state.

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Why doesn’t POTUS come here?

A headline in the National Journal online edition asks: Why won’t Obama visit North Dakota?

It’s a valid question, given the oil boom that’s changing North Dakota and beginning to change the nation’s energy strategy.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/energy/why-won-t-obama-visit-north-dakota-20130825

But I can answer the question posed by the headline and the article written by the Journal’s Amy Harder. He won’t go there for the same reason he doesn’t come to West Texas. There’s no political advantage for the president.

What’s more, West Texas is resuming its own energy boom, in the Permian Basin, not to mention the growth of the wind-energy industry throughout the Panhandle.

Presidents, though, are the supreme political animals. Democratic presidents quite often don’t bother coming to regions of the country where they lack popular support. That would be, um, West Texas and North Dakota.

Conversely, do Republican presidents spend a lot of time visiting places such as, say, the Bay Area of California, or Boston, or the Pacific Northwest? Hardly.

Frankly, I think quite a few West Texans — not to mention North Dakotans — would appreciate a presidential visit to talk up the industries that are fueling our manufacturing might and keeping our vehicles on the road.

And I also believe a Democratic president could get a warm welcome here. Do you remember the reception another very high-profile Democrat — one William Jefferson Clinton — got when he came to Amarillo in 2008 to campaign for his wife, then-U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, as she sought the Democratic Party presidential nomination? The Civic Center’s Grand Plaza Ballroom was packed beyond capacity.

The nation’s energy future is, indeed, changing, as the National Journal article points out.

A presidential visit would be a welcome event to call attention to the hard work that’s under way out here in Flyover Country.

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Clinton vs. Christie in 2016

I know it’s early. I shouldn’t even be thinking like this. But I’m starting to lick my chops at the prospect of a 2016 presidential campaign between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chris Christie.

Neither of them has declared their intention to run, although both are beginning to act ever so slightly as though they’re interested in seeking their party’s nomination. Clinton already has run once for the Democratic nomination. Christie has been the Republican governor of New Jersey for three years.

Both are dynamic presences within their own key constituencies. They’re fierce defenders of their records. They’re politically savvy.

Why Clinton?

She might have the most comprehensive resume for the job since, perhaps, George H.W. Bush. Former first lady, former U.S. senator from New York, former secretary of state. Prior to all of that, she was Arkansas’s first lady and at one time was an accomplished lawyer. She’s been close to the center of power, given her marriage to one Bill Clinton, the 42nd president of the United States.

Some pundits have compared her White House inevitability with that of General of the Army Dwight Eisenhower, who was deemed unbeatable during the 1952 presidential campaign. Turns out they were right about Ike.

Why Christie?

He is a no-nonsense guy. Christie is unafraid of the ideologues within his own party. He rolls up his sleeves and works for New Jersey. My favorite moment of the 2012 political season occurred when a Fox News Channel talking head, Steve Doocy, asked Christie if GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney would visit the Jersey Shore, which had been battered by Hurricane Sandy … on the heels of President Obama’s tour of the destruction. Christie’s response, in effect, was: I don’t give a damn whether he comes here or stays away; I’ve got a job to do. He added that he wasn’t the least bit interested in how it might affect the presidential campaign.

I ought not to engage in this kind of speculation. I’m doing it anyway with the hope that it comes to pass.