Hewitt is asking his audience of Republicans who we'd rather see win the Democratic nomination and why.
I say Obama.
The primary reason behind my choice is that I think Obama represents a real change in Democrat politics and I really cannot stand Hillary Clinton. Several points.
Rom Emmanuel is an ex Clinton staffer, and one of the more rational folks in the Clinton White House. I can remember a long interview with him in which he finally says that he just couldn't work with Bill Clinton any longer. It was his conscience talking. The disorganization, the scandal. They were too much. Limbaugh mentioned the other day that a lot of ex-Clintonistas are working for Obama now. I've got to believe that they are people like Emmanuel.
Even if they are not, I want somebody else beside all the old Clinton hacks ride into power in the Democrat Party.
What I cannot stand about Hillary Clinton is that she's such a transparent careerist. The Clinton campaign is combative. Under Hillary, it's passive-aggressive - holding character assassination cards close to the vest but announcing their presence. 'The War Room' is how they call it. They go for the jugular. And when it's their turn in the barrel they deny and whine.
There's an odd undercurrent in the argument against Obama for President. And it's true that he has made some stupid remarks on foreign policy, but that undercurrent pretends that he won't get smart fast. It implies that Clinton, as much as we hate her, will be better for the nation. We know she'll triangulate. We know she'll pay more attention to polls then her gut - hell she doesn't have one, other than ambition. We know she'll cave in to the right kind of pressure, particularly on national security. It's something most Republicans believe about her. But we also think that Obama is different enough to really do something stupid. That there's something, perhaps unsober enough about him, that he'd try an Andrew Young move - embracing Arafat, because he's the golden boy capable of seeing a new vision for the future.
I'm not necessarily convinced that Obama is unreliable for politics as usual. I think that he is an original thinker and is ready to try new approaches, but that there's something conservative about him underneath the appeal that won't make certain mistakes.
Now here's the catch. It's wishful thinking on my part. I wanted GWBush as a lover and not a fighter. I wanted a break from inside the beltway politics in 2000. I wanted an end to the divisive politics back then. I didn't vote for Bush, and I knew when it came to governing, Texas is a lightweight state. So when he hunkered down in the White House and we got exactly zero out of the domestic agencies, and his direction grated with the Pentagon and the State Department on matters of war and diplomacy I swore I'd never vote for a presidential candidate that I thought could not manage the federal bureaucracy with mastery. Obama doesn't strike anyone as an organizational genius. So how is he going to get his agenda cracking in DC? He needs hardball insiders that he runs, not them running him. Precarious balance.
On the African American side, I'd be pleased to see Obama shut down a parcel of whiners who can't manage to get over their race paranoia. With Obama as the nominee, it pretty much guarantees that all of that noise against the GOP as the party of the KKK will be cemented, but at least people will stop pretending some things are still impossible.
Whatever Obama does win, as the Barbershop guys said last week, will come out of the flesh of white liberals. You know, the ones who actually love Sharpton and Jackson (just where they are). That reckoning is coming, and I think it augers well for the GOP. Listen for the word 'plantation' in upcoming debates about the black vote within the Democrat Party if Obama loses the nomination. It is inevitable.
I remember when Maxine Waters lined up behind Bill Clinton and not behind fellow liberal Californian Jerry Brown in 92. Watch very carefully to see where black Democrats are putting their endorsements. It's a story nobody is covering, but it's about to get hot.
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