If I Was A Betting Man....

I'd place my bet on Hillary Clinton becoming the next President.

I came to that conclusion this week after reading the reaction to two Tony Blankley columns. Blankley wrote columns on October 3rd and October 10th regarding the need for Republicans and Conservatives to be pragmatic rather than stand solely on principle regarding their choice for presidential nominee.

Lest you get the wrong idea, Blankley was not suggesting that the GOP abandon core principles in a cynical quest for power. He was pointing out that Republicans, having missed their chance to govern according to those principles, might want to temper principle with pragmatism in light of their worsening electoral prospects. Further he was focused on the presidential campaign and the specific pronouncement by "Christian Conservatives" that Rudy Giuliani was "unacceptable" to them. Blankley believes that Rudy is the one GOP presidential candidate who has an actual shot at beating Mrs. Clinton.

The reaction to his columns convinces me that Hillary will, in fact, be elected. The clear majority of respondents who expressed deep religious views (largely on the abortion issue) made it clear that they would either not vote or vote for a third party candidate, if Rudy was the nominee. Obviously, this was no representative sample of "values voters", but if only a one-third or more of them abandon the GOP if Rudy is the nominee, White House interns will once again have to look over their shoulders.

I must say that I cannot understand the logic. One comment asked of Blankley..."would you vote for a candidate with whom you agreed on everything except that he supported legalized rape and murder? Of course, not". My response to that would be that the answer would be "Of course, not", only if the other candidate (with whom I disagreed on every other issue) did not also support legalized rape and murder.

If Rudy faces Hillary, you have two pro-choice nominees. If you refuse to vote for Rudy on that basis, you still get a pro-choice President and that President will have many other views you will find noxious. Eight years of Hillary Clinton appointments of liberal judges to the Federal Judiciary will guarantee us an irreversible trip down the road to socialism and political correctness. Unfortunately, it appears that some Conservatives will hold out unless they get a nominee who is "pure". What the are going to get is the leaner, meaner version of the Hill and Bill show.

My gloom about my revelation of Hillary's certain ascendancy to the White House was ameliorated somewhat by this column by Charles Krauthammer. In it, Krauthammer explains why he and other conservatives might be able to live with President Hillary. He discusses Hillary's recent change of heart on NAFTA:

"The [Washington] Post editorial noted "a perverse kind of good news" in Hillary's free-trade revisionism: "There's little chance that her position reflects any deeply held principle." And there lies the beauty not just of Clinton on free trade but of the Clinton candidacy itself: She has no principles. Her liberalism is redeemed by her ambition; her ideology subordinate to her political needs.
I could never vote for her, but I (and others of my ideological ilk) could live with her -- precisely because she is so liberated from principle. Her liberalism, like her husband's -- flexible, disciplined, calculated, triangulated -- always leaves open the possibility that she would do the right thing for the blessedly wrong (i.e. self-interested, ambition-serving, politically expedient) reason."

Oh well, at least she didn't win the Nobel Prize!