“Comeback Girl” spin and counter-spin
Update 12:50am Eastern: Some clues on how she did it. In short, she has soap opera watchers, retirees, and union members to thank.
***
As I mentioned earlier this evening, I filed my syndicated newspaper column mid-afternoon anticipating a Hillary loss. I tweaked it late tonight for tomorrow’s edition of the NYPost and am posting it below. There will be plenty of post-primary dissection of what went wrong with the polls and prognostications–and whether Hill’s kinder, softer approach the last few days changed the outcome. In the long run, though, I still think most Americans will see through the Clintons and hear Hillary’s chameleon voice for what it is: Whatever it needs to be to win.
***
Don’t let the “Comeback Gal” spin fool you. Despite the unexpectedly close finish in New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton’s campaign remains in a tailspin. And the Clintons’ pre-Granite State primary finger-pointing has left an indelible mark. It’s the media’s fault. It’s sexism’s fault. It’s the vast right-wing conspiracy’s fault.
Oh, and it’s all your fault that you laugh out loud when she tries to steal the mantle of “change” from Barack Obama by surrounding herself on stage with moldy political fogies like Madeleine Albright, Wesley Clark and James Carville.
Watching the Clinton “crackup” before the vote was less like watching glass shatter upon sudden impact and more like watching wax melt under slow, steady heat.
It took a lifetime of lies, deception, hypocrisy and hardball power grabs before Hillary and Bill’s political façades disintegrated. But now, finally, the empty dummy molds underneath have been laid bare completely.
Many will point to Hillary’s watery-eyed performance at a Portsmouth rally on Monday as a watershed moment. Down in the polls and facing imminent defeat, the erstwhile anti-Tammy Wynette turned on the spigot and played damsel in distress: “It’s not easy, and I couldn’t do it if I didn’t passionately believe it was the right thing to do. You know, I have so many opportunities from this country. I just don’t want to see us fall backward, you know?”
The steely voice — infamous for uttering profanities at staffers, state troopers and her Secret Service detail, bellowing at the Bush administration and Rush Limbaugh, and imitating a fiery Southern drawl — turned drippy: “You know, this is very personal for me. It’s not just political; it’s not just public. I see what’s happening, and we have to reverse it.” Insert heartfelt pauses and choke-ups as directed.
So long, feminist hero. Hello, weeping willow. Anyone who believes Hillary spontaneously teared up and got emotional on the campaign trail has been in a coma the last three decades.
Bill Clinton’s diarrhea of the mouth didn’t help. He flailed at reporters for putting his poor, poor wife at a “breathtaking disadvantage” (never mind the countless regal magazine covers of his wife and softball coverage over the years); lamented that he can’t turn her into something “younger, taller, male,” and whined that “the wealthier have more right to free speech than the rest of us” (never mind their $100 million war chest).
In an odd bit of damning with faint praise, Bill told Dartmouth students that “I actually tried to talk Hillary into leaving me when we were in law school, that’s the God’s truth. I told her, ‘You have more talent for public service than anybody in my generation that I have met. .¤.¤. I shouldn’t stand in your way.’ She looked at me and said, ‘Oh, Bill, I’ll never run for office.’¤”
See, she’s lied to him all along.
A few weeks after 9/11, in another moment of crisis in the Clintons’ life, I noted Hillary’s flabbergasting demeanor during President Bush’s address to Congress. Americans around the country also noted her cold behavior.
James Gale of Silver Spring, Md., wrote to The Washington Post: “She at times seemed bored and uninterested, clapping perfunctorily, and at other times she was talking during the speech. I thought her actions were unbecoming a senator at this difficult time.”
Teacher Kathie Larkin of Atlanta wrote to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “This is behavior I would not accept from my sixth-graders listening to a speaker, and I expected better of an adult from a state ripped apart by terrorist violence. Hillary needs to grow up.”
I noted at the time that adversity magnifies deep character flaws. That hasn’t changed. And neither has Hillary.
You can’t fake a core. You can’t fake charm. And you can’t fake humility. Mannequin Hillary tried during the ABC News debate in New Hampshire over the weekend when questioned about her likeability. “Well, that hurts my feelings,” she coyly purred in attempted mock self-effacement.
One problem: The Clintons are too steeped in the politics of self-entitlement to pull off credible self-effacement. Seated next to a rival who has stolen her liberal thunder and who might make history as the nation’s first black president, Hillary couldn’t help declaring: “I am an agent of change, I embody change. I think having the first woman president is a huge change.”
She can’t tolerate someone else out-politically-correct-ing her. This was supposed to be her year. Her triumph. Her her-story.
Maybe a few of those tears welling up in her eyes were real after all. Expect more as this contested race—a race she thought would be a cakewalk—continues.
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Can’t wait until she loses the next one.
The art of turd polishing, whereby the polisher can achieve a dull luster, is carried out with flawless execution with Hillary. She’s a loser!
Hillary.is.evil.incarnate.
Chris Matthews just threw out the race card as to why the polls were so out of whack. He said the pollsters ask questions in a very politically correct manner with no affect to to their voice so people feel compelled to give a politically correct answer. If pollsters sounded more like Archie Bunker, people would be more honest about who they’d vote for.
Translation? Chris thinks pollsters need to start off by asking if the voters are going to vote for the darkie.
Um, which God? Bacchus, Beelzebub? While I have a strong personal faith, I am not an overly religious man and I have some beliefs that mainstream Christianity would call heretical. Still, I firmly maintain that Bill and Hillary Clinton are evil in the biblical sense. If there is a hell, I firmly believe that each have a special place already assigned for the evils they have and continue to visit upon the world and this nation. I pray that the majority of the population who I believe to be good, albeit sheep-like, people to see this about her and not unleash a new darkness upon this nation.
Well, other than that, what do you think about Hillary, Michelle?
Have we all had a chance to “get to know her” yet, or is this “conversation” going to drone on for another 10 months?
ZZZZzzzzzzzzz.
The only reason that the Clintons have been tattooed on the american public for so many excruciating years is that there are roughly 50% of americans that are dim witted enough to swallow what Monica didn’t.
It’s only a matter of time before we are completely emulating the EU in all of our social policies, and the good of the few will outweigh the good of the many.
I feel sorry for my son and his future children, he may never know the complete and utter joy of freedom and individualism that I knew growing up in the early 60’s and 70’s.
Though watching Hillary eat crow brings me pleasure, I’m glad she eeked out New Hampshire. I imagine it will bring her trademark arrogance back to the surface and remind people why they don’t like her, just in time for Feb 5th.
She will bring them sniffs, and they shall loathe her for it.
The woman is still highly unlikeable. For the life of me, I don’t like how this stale piece of fruit has been relentlessly pushed upon the public like she’s the cure for all wrongs. She is absolutely the best example of how the media controls and force feeds, in a sense, what American’s think and do. Buy Tide. Use cream rinse. A soft brand of toilet paper. Fittingly, and we have Hillary.
The “iron my shirt” plants and the crocodile tears appear to have energized the gullible to vote for the soulless. My wife and I really detest this woman and her husband, but we have for a very long time. I am amazed at how many people can’t see right through this transparent pair of sociopaths.
The fact that this woman is where she is is a testament to the gullibility of people. PT Barnum nailed it: A sucker born every minute.
The bumper sticker on my car:
Is Hillary Evil? Depends what your definition of “is” is.
In this state where people still have Wellstone stickers on their cars or “What Would Wellstone Do” bumper stickers, I smile everytime someone pulls up behind me at a stoplight.
Uhhhh… That would be the nation’s first half-black President, and that still makes him a white President too. But, that’s neither here nor there. Hillary is still not going to win her party’s nomination come July.
Hillary is scary, the people who are blindly voting for her scare me more.
In the long run she is so polarizing that it is unlikely that she could really do much damage to the economy and social culture, marxxist that she is.
However I fear that she will embolden the cult of islam and that problem could kill us.
I just want to pop the voters in N.H. on the head like in the V-8 commercials.
her tears were real, but not for the reason being sold to the voters. they were tears of self-pity. a narcissistic look at the fact that if she didn’t win NH, she was facing the decision of back to the senate as an inevitable future. that would make her cry.
she has lusted for power, the ultimate power of the presidency, and it is not as near as she had thought. i just don’t know what will happen if huck the schmuck or mccain actually win the republican candidacy. we will have the choice of liberals or liberals. ugh!
I’ll tell you what’s scary:
This woman is trading on Mexican racism. The theories spinning around the Internet is that Mexican Voters in California will refuse to vote for Obama in droves because Mexicans hate Blacks.
Thanks be to Hillary and the latest voting race war.
The Clintons: The gift that keeps on giving!
Glamchild said,
I’ve heard this too, and not just on the Internet.
Why does the MSM never even attempt to bat at an eye at the Clinton’s sometimes misogynistic flirtation with – if not outright use of – racism? Let a Republican or Indy try something that could even be misconstrued as racist, and he or she would be kaput!