Hillary Clinton: Helping Her Extreme Makeover
This image is from yesterday, and the whirlwind media tour surrounding the Frist-Clinton health information technology bill. It’s safe to say that this is the first time in a long time the Today show has covered the intricacies of health care IT.
“Hillary Teams Up with Top Republican” is no longer breaking news. In fact, it’ll soon sound like a broken record. A visit to Hillary Clinton’s Senate news room reveals something that was becoming anecdotally obvious: Hillary is in the process of smothering her image as a shrill and divisive partisan by hitching her wagon to any Republican Senator she can find. It’s not just Frist-Clinton. In the last twenty three days, we’ve had news of Voinovich-Clinton. And Graham-Clinton. And Brownback-Clinton. And Thune-Clinton. That’s an average of one major bipartisan initiative every four days. In all of 2004, Hillary Clinton issued a release in conjunction with a Republican Senator four times, or once every ninety-one days. And in case there any doubt about she’s up to, Hillary’s press office has issued a total of 232 releases so far in 2005 and 494 in 2004 — a staggering output even for the most grizzled veterans of national politics.
Republicans need to back off here and leave her alone with her legislative initiatives.
We don’t need to help her “seem moderate”.
She isn’t.
So, why are these Republican Senators helping her?