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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 May 6, 2008 / 1 Iyar 5768

How Hillary became a social conservative (sort of)

By Rich Lowry


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | When Hillary Rodham gave the commencement address at Wellesley College in 1969, extolling the virtues of "human liberation" on behalf of a restless generation of left-wing youth, did she have any idea she'd one day be the champion of old, white, beer-drinking Democrats everywhere?


Oh, what tangled webs we weave. And what strange transformations are wrought by presidential primaries. Candidates are often driven by their constituencies and the logic of their campaigns into unexpected places.


In 2000, John McCain — hitherto basically an orthodox conservative — ended up a populist reformer alienated from his party. In 2004, Howard Dean — hitherto a wonkish moderate — ended up an anti-war fire-breather. And in 2008, Hillary Clinton — part of the McGovernite takeover of the Democratic Party — is representing the Democrats' culturally conservative wing (such as it is).


It's only as compared with Barack Obama, of course, that Clinton looks like a curmudgeonly traditionalist. Only he could have given her such wide openings to defend small-town mores and (gingerly) chastise a black nationalist preacher. It's not policy differences on cultural issues that divide Obama and Clinton, but differing sensibilities.


A push-pull dynamic has redefined Hillary. As the mainstream media, the left-wing blogs and latte liberals have turned on her, she has held all the more tightly to her down-scale constituency and reacted against her critics. She has lashed out against MoveOn.org, and husband Bill has dissed "upscale cultural liberals." She has defied the precious rules of liberal politics, referring to Osama bin Laden in a TV ad, threatening to "obliterate" Iran and — even worse — sitting down with Bill O'Reilly for a cordial interview. The same people who spent a decade defending her and her husband howl betrayal.


Every politician becomes a function of his constituency, a particular peril this year. Both Republican and Democratic primary races have been exercises in electoral tribalism: The evangelicals have voted for the evangelical, the Mormons for the Mormon, the Southerners for the Southerners, the blacks for the black, the youth for the young guy, the old white people for the old white people. The easiest way for Hillary to grow her support has been to get even more of her — older, poorer, less-educated — white voters.


Why should she get them? Both she and Obama went to Ivy League law schools. The difference is that Obama left Harvard Law School for community organizing in Chicago and then a political career on the South Side. It's as if Bill and Hillary Clinton had departed Yale Law School and headed straight to San Francisco to clamber up the slippery pole of progressive politics. That way lies Nancy Pelosi.


Instead, they went to Arkansas and had to win over Bubba voters to survive. Democrats successful at the national level come from the South because it forces them into sympathy with parts of America not represented in the liberal, coastal bubble. Hillary obviously doesn't have the natural popular touch that Bill does, but she's sending him to every small town in America on her behalf.


Then, there's the matter of experience. Hillary's years in politics benefit her not because she's used to answering that proverbial red phone, but because they have roughed her up, making her — like the Velveteen Rabbit — more real for her voters. The soaring idealism in Hillary was long compromised away (by her) or kicked out of her (by her critics), giving her a battered grounding in realism that Obama lacks.


All of this has made her a stronger candidate. Operating on the Bill Clinton model, a Democratic candidate needs a "Sister Souljah moment," distancing him from the fringes of the party. Hillary Clinton's Sister Souljah moment has been running against Obama, pushing herself to the center in relation to him and forging a bond with voters Democrats need in a general election. Oddly, she may be a more electable candidate now when the odds are against her winning the nomination than when she seemed a lock. Tangled webs, indeed.

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© 2008 King Features Syndicate

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