That was then. This is now. Posted by: Dale Franks
on Thursday, May 22, 2008
You gotta hand it to Hillary Clinton: She's got stones the size of Gibraltar. Obviously, she wants—needs—the florida and Michigan delegates to help out her delegate count. Speaking yesterday in Boca Raton, she compared the DNC rule forbidding the Florida's delegates from being seated at the Democratic Convention, to Slavery and the Civil Rights movement.
She said "there's a reason why so many have fought so hard and sacrificed so much. It's because they knew that to be a citizen of this country is to have the right and responsibility to help shape its future. Not just to have your voice heard but to have it count. People have fought hard because they knew their vote was at stake and so was their children's futures.
Those people, she said “refused to accept their assigned place as second-class citizens. Men and women who saw America not as it was, but as it could and should be, and committed themselves to extending the frontiers of our democracy. The abolitionists and all who fought to end slavery and ensure freedom came with the full right of citizenship. The tenacious women and a few brave men who gathered at the Seneca Falls convention back in 1848 to demand the right to vote.”
Hmm. Well. That sounds pretty bad.
Of course, it conveniently forgets that last fall, Ms. Clinton herself was strongly in favor of this horrific form of Jim Crow.
Three of the major Democratic presidential candidates on Saturday pledged not to campaign in Florida, Michigan and other states trying to leapfrog the 2008 primary calendar, a move that solidified the importance of the opening contests of Iowa and New Hampshire.
Hours after Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina agreed to sign a loyalty pledge put forward by party officials in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York followed suit. The decision seemed to dash any hopes of Mrs. Clinton relying on a strong showing in Florida as a springboard to the nomination.
“We believe Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina play a unique and special role in the nominating process,” Patti Solis Doyle, the Clinton campaign manager, said in a statement.
The pledge sought to preserve the status of traditional early-voting states and bring order to an unwieldy series of primaries that threatened to accelerate the selection process. It was devised to keep candidates from campaigning in Florida, where the primary is set for Jan. 29, and Michigan, which is trying to move its contest to Jan. 15.
Of course, that was when she thought she'd win, and it wouldn't matter. Now, it does matter, so, being a good Clinton, she's abandoned her written pledge.
Usually, politicians have the good grace to wait until after they are elected to reneg on their obligations. Of course, no one has ever accused the Clintons of good grace. But they yield to no man in their ability to act with breathtaking cynicism, when it is in their interests to do so.
It is enormously amusing, however, to see so many on the left profess to be shocked—shocked!—at the Clinton's behavior, as if the years 1992-2000 never happened.
