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Nov. 20, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: How to make every second of your life come first
Caroline B. Glick: Whither American Jewry
Nov. 19, 2009
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Please Listen to this Godcast (5 minutes)
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Feb. 13, 2007 / 25 Shevat, 5767

Hillary's Nightmare: Ralph Nader

By Dick Morris & Eileen Mc Gann


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | After his role in destroying Al Gore's chance to win the 2000 election, consumer activist and all-around maverick Ralph Nader would seem to have lost his credibility as a presidential candidate. In 2004, as if to punish him for his spoiler role, he got only 1 percent of the national vote, not enough to have any impact on the election.


But Ralph may have new life if he runs again in 2008. As Congress sifts its way through the various resolutions on the war in Iraq, Senator Hillary Clinton will find herself on the spot, torn between preserving her mainstream viability by supporting the troops in the field and maintaining her front runner status in the Democratic Party by courting the anti-war left. She will be asked to vote on Senator Barack Obama's bi ll to set a timetable of troop withdrawal culminating in a total pullout by March 2008, and on bills to cut off funding for Bush's "surge" of twenty thousand extra troops.


To date, Hillary has rejected setting a timetable, saying that it undermines our mission and encourages the enemy to hang in there, and says she will vote against cutting off funds for our troops while they are in harm's way. If she continues with these positions, she will become the right of the Democratic 2008 field. Obama may also oppose a funding cutoff, but his focus on a timetable for withdrawal would put him to Hillary's left. And former VP candidate John Edwards, who doesn't sit in the Senate anymore, will loudly proclaim his support for both a timetable and a funding cutoff, making him the left flank of the three-way race.


If Hillary doesn't change her positions — always a possibility when dealing with her — but still appeases the left enough to win the nomination, she may run smack into Ralph Nader as a professed, overt, and absolutely committed anti-war candidate. In a race of Rudy Giuliani vs. Hillary Clinton vs. Ralph Nader, a dedicated opponent of the war has only one possible vote: Nader.


The ranks of antiwar voters could swell Nader's performance far above the dismal 1 percent he got in 2004 and even above the 3 percent he won in 2000. It is not inconceivable that Nader could pass 5-7 percent of the vote or go even higher if he is the only antiwar candidate in the field.


The real question is: How will Hillary finesse the left and still keep opposing a timetable for a pullout and supporting funding for troops? She will try to ratchet up her anti-war rhetoric, even as she votes to let it continue. Her recent declaration at the Democratic National Committee that she would "end" the war as president, reminiscent of Eisenhower's 1952 vow to "go to Korea", is an example of this strategy. Her criticism of Bush and the Pentagon will become ever more strident as she tries to make the left focus on what she says not on what she does.


This approach may appease the broad center of the Democratic Party enough to win their votes for Hillary, but it will not satisfy the purist, activist, antiwar left. They will nurse grudges over Hillary's defeat of their anti-war hero: John Edwards. If the animosity spills over into the general election, it could catalyze a Nader candidacy in the fall of '08.


Nader doesn't like Hillary. He recently called her a "panderer and a flatterer." He told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that while he has not decided to run, "I'm committed to trying to give more voices and choices to the American people on the ballot. That means more th ird parties, independent candidates and to break up this two-party elected dictatorship that is becoming more and more like a dial for the same corporate dollars."


Sounds like a candidate to me.

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JWR contributor Dick Morris is author, most recently, of "Because He Could". (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.) Comment by clicking here.



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