"She is acting like one of our own."

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04 May 2008 07:34 pm

The Weekly Standard bows down before the new right-wing Clinton. My own view is that the neocons now see her as the main way to defeat Obama and the possibility of real change in the occupation of the Middle East. They know how vulnerable McCain is - and fear Obama, because they have not gotten into his head. But Clinton's politics have been forged in the crucible of far right attacks, and while, in the past, her liberalism was reactive, it now seems she has utterly internalized the Rove dynamic:

She's running a right-wing campaign. She's running the classic Republican race against her opponent, running on toughness and use-of-force issues, the campaign that the elder George Bush ran against Michael Dukakis, that the younger George Bush waged in 2000 and then again against John Kerry, and that Ronald Reagan--"The Bear in the Forest"--ran against Jimmy Carter and Walter F. Mondale. And she's doing it with much the same symbols.

If she can also bring down the most promising Democrat in a generation, the neocon right would be thrilled. Check this out:

And better--or worse--she is becoming a social conservative, a feminist form of George Bush.

Against an opponent who shops for arugula, hangs out with ex-Weathermen, and says rural residents cling to guns and to God in unenlightened despair at their circumstances, she has rushed to the defense of religion and firearms, while knocking back shots of Crown Royal and beer. Her harsh, football-playing Republican father (the villain of the piece, against whom she rebelled in earlier takes on her story) has become a role model, a working class hero, whose name she evokes with great reverence. Any day now, she'll start talking Texan, and cutting the brush out in Chappaqua or at her posh mansion on Embassy Row...

Continuing the war is the prize, of course:

She might run to the right of McCain, if she makes it to the general election, and get the votes of rebellious conservatives. Or she, Lieberman, and McCain could form a pro-war coalition, with all of them running to pick up the phone when it rings in the small hours.

Or to put it another way: