Starting Gate: A Win-Win For Clinton?

[rinsd]

October 22, 2007, 8:42 AM
Starting Gate: A Win-Win For Clinton?
Posted by Vaughn Ververs

It's official – Hillary Clinton is dominating the presidential campaign. In both parties. Oh, sure, the Republican candidates took time in last night's debate to highlight the differences among them, but only as a way to argue over which of them is best suited to take on the Democratic frontrunner in the general election.

Long a favorite target of Republicans, Clinton has come under fire of late from competitors in her own party as well. Barack Obama, John Edwards and others seeking to knock her off stride argue that their party can't afford to return to the politics of the 1990s, that Clinton is not representative of the kind of change voters are looking for in this high-stakes election and that her record is one of political convenience over principle. Most of all, they say, Hillary Clinton is too polarizing to be elected.

Her stature and history is something that Clinton has managed to turn to into a positive on the stump and all the attention is playing right into her hands. Campaigning in Iowa over the weekend, Clinton subtly made the point. "There's been a lot of cumulated attacks on me going back 15 years," she said. "And what I've done on this campaign is to get out and have people form their own opinions of me and slowly, but surely, I think, sort of reverse some of the unfounded feelings people had about me." It's a less-than-subtle reminder that, despite years spent as a political lightening rod, the Clintons win elections.

And, becoming the focus of the GOP primary battle only serves to help Clinton's seeming inevitability. Republican candidates are clearly counting on Clinton to do something they have been unable to do – unite and excite their party's base. But there's little evidence it's working. Clinton has been the presumptive front-runner more or less since the race began last winter and yet GOP enthusiasm remains low by all indications. While Clinton, Obama and others amass huge war chests, Republican candidates are struggling to open the wallets of formerly generous givers.

More at the link - http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2007/10/22/politics/horserace/entry3390458.shtml

[Acadia Blue]

1. She will lose it for us because males won't vote for her even though

they say they will.