Republicans who have been looking for the hole in Hillary Rodham Clinton's armor-plated campaign may have finally found it.
In last night's Democrat debate, Clinton walked into a trap on driver's licenses for illegal aliens.
She knew she'd been tripped, and immediately complained about her opponents playing "gotcha." But in politics, when you're complaining about gotcha, it's usually because somebody did get you, and good.
In this case, Clinton was on all sides of the question of whether illegal aliens should be given driver's licenses, making such a mess of her answer that all sides — her own Democratic colleagues as well as her potential Republican opponents — immediately called her on it.
Christopher Dodd, Barack Obama and John Edwards all said she was being inconsistent, the Republican National Committee had a full press release parsing her words within minutes, and Mitt Romney's campaign issued this statement: "Senator Clinton's troubling answer on providing drivers licenses to illegal immigrants was emblematic of someone who is both dismissive of efforts to enforce our nation's immigration laws and entirely unwilling to offer a straight answer to a very direct question."
However the rest of the immigration issue plays out — and that is anything but clear at this point, with each side risking overplaying its hand — the driver's licenses issue seems a clear-cut winner for the Republican candidates, who say licensing illegals is a step too far.
— Stephen Dinan, national political reporter, The Washington Times
Comments (3)
Instead of blaming Bush for the failure, Senator Clinton should have moved the issue to where it is now. Congressional failure to understand what the American people want which has forced the states to take action they feel is appropriate. Therefore one governor's actions are the result of that failure and a support or non-support answer cannot be the final, it is simply a node, one of 50. The answer to immigration is to start with what we have now, listen to the issues of all of the governors with regard to immigration, integrate homeland security, and national defense and start congressional planning for legal and budgetary assistance. The actions of one state, i.e. local politics, cannot drive policy, they can contribute, but they cannot drive it.
Posted by Larry Stone | November 1, 2007 2:40 AM
Apologists are saying that the issue is a state concern, not a federal one, and therefore that's the answer she should have given. But isn't she a state senator? Why should she presume to answer the question only from a presidential point of view?
Also, the language in America now becomes so blurred - what is the meaning of is? - that people forget the true nature of the gotcha question. The gotcha question relates to asking candidates or politicians about more obscure issues or people, such as the name of the head of a remote country. Asking about the relevancy of the NY proposal, something every Democratic candiate should have considered, is hardly a gotcha question.
Additionally, because Russert spent so much time questioning the former 1st lady, apologists claim that he was piling on when in fact he was allowing her, as usual, to dominate the air space when compared to Dodd, Biden and Kucinich. Simply because she was ill-prepared to defend her positions doesn't indicate piling on. It signifies, however, she's unprepared to be the leader of the free world.
Finally, until now she's shown a stiff upper lip that could be interpreted as the kind of toughness required in these difficult times. But releasing memos about her treatment being unfair and getting blogdom to defend her illustrates a grave weakness of character. One wonders, now that she's been brusied a bit, how well will she handle subsequent, justifiable attacks?
Posted by laurent breach | November 2, 2007 4:08 AM
All of us need to remember that Hillary Clinton has never had to face any tough, really tough, opposition in a political campaign. In both New York State elections she ran against jokes in the Republican party (especially when Rudy Giuliani pulled out of the election because of prostate cancer)and she scated to easy victories. But now she is going to have to face tough opposition from Presidential candidates in her own party (assuming they want to get elected) and then, if she wins the nomination, she's going to get roasted by the Republicans in the general election. This game is far from over and anything can happen. Don't be too surprised if Obama does better than everyone thinks. You never know, because everyone just "knew" that Howard Dean was going to get the nomination in 2004, right?
Posted by Libertyship46 | November 2, 2007 2:04 PM