Uniters At Last
Peggy Noonan's column today in the Wall Street journal is worth taking the time to read. It eviscerates the Clintons, who Noonan points out have finally achieved the distinction of becoming uniters: pretty much everyone is learning to loath them. Noonan is also hard on Republicans, so it's a bipartisan kind of column.
Bill Clinton, with his trembly, red faced rage, makes John McCain look young. His divisive and destructive daily comportment—this is a former president of the United States—is a civic embarrassment. It is also an education, and there is something heartening in this.
There are many serious and thoughtful liberals and Democrats who support Mr. Obama and John Edwards, and who are seeing Mr. Clinton in a new way and saying so. Here is William Greider in The Nation, the venerable left-liberal magazine. The Clintons are "high minded" on the surface but "smarmily duplicitous underneath, meanwhile jabbing hard at the groin area. They are a slippery pair and come as a package. The nation is at fair risk of getting them back in the White House for four years."
That, again, is from one of the premier liberal journals in the United States. It is exactly what conservatives have been saying for a decade. This may mark a certain coming together of the thoughtful on both sides. The Clintons, uniters at last.
Mr. Obama takes the pummeling and preaches the high road. It's all windup with him, like a great pitcher more comfortable preparing to throw than throwing. Something in him resists aggression. He tends to be indirect in his language, feinting, only suggestive. I used to think he was being careful not to tear the party apart, and endanger his own future.
But the Clintons are tearing the party apart. It will not be the same after this. It will not be the same after its most famous leader, and probable ultimate victor, treated a proud and accomplished black man who is a U.S. senator as if he were nothing, a mere impediment to their plans. And to do it in a way that signals, to his supporters, How dare you have the temerity, the ingratitude, after all we've done for you?
Watch for the GOP to attempt swoop in after the November elections and make profit of the wreckage.
Don't miss her take on the state of the Republican race – and the raging, destructive flame wars going on between conservative pundits. (That is something I have been trying not to do, as I pointed out in an earlier post.) It is interesting to see all the people who suddenly realize just how destructive the Clintons are to the politics in this country. It's a shame they did not see it earlier, but they got there eventually. There is more MSM negative coverage of the Clintons these days – I certainly can't remember this much ever before. So the press is also tired of covering for the Clintons. Maybe, at long last, they really have worn out their welcome.
By feeblemind, January 25, 2008 @ 10:16 am
Pardon me for scoffing at Noonan, but the Republicans ’swooping in’ after the November elections? Hah! With what? Repubs stand to lose ground in both the House and Senate and they are bereft of dynamic leadership. They don’t seem to have learned anything from the thrashing they took in 2006 when the dems beat them with nothing. They seem determined to drive conservatives out of the party. Sorry Peggy. Can’t see it.
By Mockinbird, January 25, 2008 @ 2:42 pm
Ohhhh, Fred, please come back!