HILLARY MAKES IT CLEAR: SHE'S NO FLIP FLOPPER-- SHE'S 100% INSIDE-THE-BELTWAY ESTABLISHMENT CONSULTANT-ORIENTED CAREER POL

When I woke up this morning I read two stories about Hillary Clinton, one in the Sunday Times and one in Daily Kos. Patrick Healy in the Times examines Senator Clinton's inability to back away from her October 2002 series of votes to authorize the use of force against Iraq. Ironically, no one mentions that her overall Iraq voting record is absolutely terrible. Over the past 4 years, thirty Democratic senators have voted more strenuously to oppose the Bush-Cheney Regime while Clinton is way at the bottom of the barrel with reactionaries like Max Baucus, Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln, Evan Bayh, Ben and Bill Nelson and, of course, ex-Democrat and Clinton pal, Holy Joe Lieberman.

Right from the Oct 10th vote she was firmly on the Bush bandwagon. Take a look at how she phrases her support for the Regime's plans to mount an illegal attack on a sovereign country. This is from her own official website:

I believe the facts that have brought us to this fateful vote are not in doubt. Saddam Hussein is a tyrant who has tortured and killed his own people, even his own family members, to maintain his iron grip on power. He used chemical weapons on Iraqi Kurds and on Iranians, killing over 20 thousand people. Unfortunately, during the 1980's, while he engaged in such horrific activity, he enjoyed the support of the American government, because he had oil and was seen as a counterweight to the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran.
In 1991, Saddam Hussein invaded and occupied Kuwait, losing the support of the United States. The first President Bush assembled a global coalition, including many Arab states, and threw Saddam out after forty-three days of bombing and a hundred hours of ground operations. The U.S.-led coalition then withdrew, leaving the Kurds and the Shiites, who had risen against Saddam Hussein at our urging, to Saddam's revenge.
As a condition for ending the conflict, the United Nations imposed a number of requirements on Iraq, among them disarmament of all weapons of mass destruction, stocks used to make such weapons, and laboratories necessary to do the work. Saddam Hussein agreed, and an inspection system was set up to ensure compliance. And though he repeatedly lied, delayed, and obstructed the inspections work, the inspectors found and destroyed far more weapons of mass destruction capability than were destroyed in the Gulf War, including thousands of chemical weapons, large volumes of chemical and biological stocks, a number of missiles and warheads, a major lab equipped to produce anthrax and other bio-weapons, as well as substantial nuclear facilities.
In 1998, Saddam Hussein pressured the United Nations to lift the sanctions by threatening to stop all cooperation with the inspectors. In an attempt to resolve the situation, the UN, unwisely in my view, agreed to put limits on inspections of designated "sovereign sites" including the so-called presidential palaces, which in reality were huge compounds well suited to hold weapons labs, stocks, and records which Saddam Hussein was required by UN resolution to turn over. When Saddam blocked the inspection process, the inspectors left. As a result, President Clinton, with the British and others, ordered an intensive four-day air assault, Operation Desert Fox, on known and suspected weapons of mass destruction sites and other military targets.
In 1998, the United States also changed its underlying policy toward Iraq from containment to regime change and began to examine options to effect such a change, including support for Iraqi opposition leaders within the country and abroad.
In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001.
It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons. Should he succeed in that endeavor, he could alter the political and security landscape of the Middle East, which as we know all too well affects American security.
Now this much is undisputed.

Really? The majority of Democrats in the House disputed them and nearly half the Democrats in the Senate did too. Hillary's problem, her consultants have made clear, is that she-- following their advice-- showed terrible judgment. But the judgment she used then is not nearly as bad as the judgment she's using today-- to follow the advice of the same Inside-the-Beltway hackish Democratic consultants, the same people who engineered the defeat of John Kerry and Al Gore and seem to be set on doing the impossible-- presiding over a Republican victory in 2008.

To these professional loser consultants saying "I was wrong" makes her a flip-flopper and... someone who made a mistake. So instead they've opted for what they did to Kerry-- making her sound insincere and someone who can't give a straight answer. This is a sure formula to turn people against her as someone who can't be trusted.


Markos shows that it is not only low-information voters who are turned off by this strategy.

Not only is the Clinton campaign pig-headed, they are also remarkably out-of-touch. They are "surprised" at the anger this war is generating? Has she been living in a cave the last four years (yes, the Senate apparently is a cave). The last thing we need in the White House is another out-of-touch, tone-deaf Bush-style presidency, unable or unwilling to admit mistakes and change course as a result.
Hillary will now see her campaign events hijacked by anti-war protesters, with people demanding she defend her vote at every corner. Iraq will dominate coverage of her campaign, and she's on the wrong side of the issue. And by going this far without admitting her mistake, she has painted herself into a corner. Any attempt now to back off and apologize would be met with the proper scorn.
For Hillary, No amount of nuance will make this issue go away.
Today she lost my potential vote. I doubt I'm the only person in this position. Thankfully, as Hillary so helpfully pointed out, the rest of the field 1) didn't make the mistake to begin with, or 2) aren't afraid to admit their mistakes.

Markos has it right. People want a straight shooter who they can trust, not someone who plays Inside-the-Beltway word games. She's coming across as one of "them," not one of "us" and, ironically, a deceitful and corrupt clown like Rudy Giuliani is coming across as more "authentic." (Today CNN had a GOP consultant on, the odious Ben Stein, who predicted that Clinton would win the Democratic nomination and then be defeated by Giuliani because Americans are looking for someone "goofy.")