Hillary’s Bad Politics and Worse Ideas

141124111023-hillary-clinton-new-hampshire-story-topOnce again Hillary Clinton has given the Republicans some suicidal soundbites they should stash away for 2016 in the likely event she is the Democratic candidate for president. A review of some of her recent statements reveals that Clinton is not just entitled, money-grubbing, unlikeable, unpleasant, and unaccomplished. Nor do they just show that she is a political dunce who has obviously learned nothing from her politically brilliant husband. More seriously, they expose her commitment to failed ideas and dangerous delusions.

First there was the “What difference at this point does it make!” she practically shrieked to Senator Ron Johnson during a January 2013 hearing on the Benghazi debacle that unfolded on September 11, 2012. Clinton had told the grieving parents of the victims during the transfer of remains ceremony at Andrews Air Force base that they died because of “an awful Internet video that we had nothing to do with.” Four Americans, including an ambassador, had been murdered on her watch, but she refused to explain to the Senate why she blamed the hapless maker of a YouTube video, who spent a year in jail.

This evasion is significant, for within hours of the attack it was clear that it had been a carefully coordinated, well-planned assault, not the spontaneous reaction to a video. Soon it also became known that ambassador Stevens had repeatedly requested increased security, but had been denied by officials in the State and Defense Departments. As Secretary of State, Clinton was ultimately responsible for those decisions made by State, as well as for the astonishing failure to notice the escalating violence in the months before the attacks, or the significance of the anniversary of 9/11, or the immediate evidence that the attack was not a spontaneous reaction to a video that had been on YouTube for weeks.

But in her response to all this evidence of negligence and post facto political spin, all she could do was indignantly declare that all these failures were irrelevant. In 2016, this footage of the arm-waving, shrill Clinton transparently trying to misdirect the Senators and the citizens from her patent incompetence should be played and replayed in political ads.

Next came the more recent revelation of her embarrassing economic ignorance, shameless pandering to her left-wing base. At a campaign event in October, attended also by lefty heartthrob Elizabeth Warren, Clinton lectured, “Don’t let anybody, don’t let anybody tell you that, ah, you know, it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs. You know that old theory, trickle-down economics. That has been tried, that has failed. It has failed rather spectacularly.”

Somehow Clinton missed the 1980s, when economic and tax policies that encouraged business investment led to spectacular growth. As the Laffer Center explains,

“According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, 1982-1999 was one continuous mega-economic expansion.  In fact, as it stretched into 2007, this 25 Year Boom saw a tripling in the net wealth of U.S. households and businesses from $20 trillion in 1981 to $60 trillion by 2007.  When adjusted for inflation, more wealth was created in this 25-year boom than in the previous 200 years. This sustained economic growth is not only impressive on its own, but even more astonishing as it compares to the period immediately preceding it.  In the 10 years from 1972-1982, recessions were deep and recoveries were short.  In fact, throughout American history, the nation’s economy has been in recession or depression roughly one-third of the time.  But from 1981-2005, the annual growth rate of real gross domestic product (GDP) in the U.S. was 3.4 percent per year, and 3.8 percent per year during the 1983-1989 Reagan expansion alone.”

Compare that to the performance of Obama’s economic policies over the last 6 years, when intrusive regulatory regimes like Dodd-Frank and a runaway EPA, Obamacare’s highjacking of the health-care industry, the trillion-dollar stimulus squandered on crony socialist projects like “green energy,” and the anti-business rhetoric of Obama’s “you didn’t build that,” have all led to sluggish economic growth, metastasizing debt, declining income for the middle class, an explosion in entitlement spending, and nearly 20 million unemployed and under-employed.

Contrary to Clinton’s Keynesian superstitions and dirigiste magical thinking, what has “failed spectacularly” has been progressive economic policies that think parasitic politicians and unaccountable government bureaucrats can manage a complex, dynamic economic system better than a free market that incentivizes people to actually build businesses that create jobs and increase wealth. And just as spectacularly incompetent is Hillary’s political tin ear that lets her make such a statement just to curry favor with a narrow base of anti-capitalist fundamentalists, when she surely must know that come the 2016 presidential election, those words will be pinned to the Obama albatross sure to be hanging around her neck.

Finally, there is the bizarre statement at Georgetown last week about improving our foreign policy with what she called “smart power”:  “Using every possible tool and partner to advance peace and security. Leaving no one on the sidelines. Showing respect even for one’s enemies. Trying to understand, in so far as psychologically possible, empathize with their perspective and point of view. Helping to define the problems, determine the solutions.” She then added a banal cliché of modern feminism, suggesting that the lack of women negotiators and signatories was responsible for the failure of many peace treaties. After all, women are naturally more empathetic and sensitive to others’ “point of view,” one of those Victorian stereotypes that feminists used to tell us were sexist insults.

These comments embody everything that is wrong with a modern foreign policy based on Kantian delusions about a global “harmony of interests,” the notion that all peoples are just like us and want all the same goods such as peace, prosperity, political freedom, and respect for human rights. If they behave differently, it’s because they just don’t know these goods are in their best interests, or they have been traumatized by history, particularly the depredations of Western colonialism, imperialism, and capitalist exploitation, which are the causes of their violent aggression and brutality. Thus if we “understand” and “empathize” with the roots of our enemies’ behavior, they will see the light and abandon aggression and tyranny.

This is the same delusion that Obama based his foreign policy on, as evidenced by his infamous “apology tour,” on which he donned the hair shirt of Western sin and groveled before foreign audiences. It’s the application to foreign affairs of the two-bit psychologizing that dominates the public schools, where boosting self-esteem and “empathizing” with punks and bullies are the favored mechanisms for teaching and civilizing young people. It utterly lacks any understanding of the tragic constants of human nature and the wisdom accumulated by the human race since the ancient Greeks and Hebrews––that, as Machiavelli said, “all men are bad and that they will use their malignity of mind every time they have the opportunity.”

For all her alleged foreign policy toughness, Clinton’s philosophy embodies the bad utopian ideals that have enabled much of the disorder afflicting the world since their spectacular failure in preventing World War I. We hear the same delusions in the words of Neville Chamberlain after Hitler’s Anschluss of Austria in March 1938, when he told the House of Commons, “We should take any and every opportunity to try to remove any genuine and legitimate grievance that may exist,” and then imagined telling Hitler, “The best thing you can do is to tell us exactly what you want for your Sudeten Deutsch.” Such blind “empathy” and “understanding” and “respect” for Germany’s “grievances,” of course, in 6 months culminated in the debacle of Munich and the devastating sequel of World War II.

Contrary to Clinton and Obama, enemies like Vladimir Putin, ISIS, Bashar al Assad, Hamas, Hezbollah, Boko Haram, the Ayatollah Khamenei, and Xi Jinping are not the global village’s wayward teenagers “acting out” because they don’t know their own best interests and suffer from insufficient self-esteem and “respect.” They are hard, brutal men, vicious and ruthless, who know exactly what they want, and who possess beliefs alien to Western ideals like liberal democracy, human rights, tolerance, and a preference for diplomatic words and “mutual understanding and respect.” In their “perspective” and “point of view,” violence is a tool of international relations, and a legitimate instrument for achieving their aims and interests. And they have nothing but contempt for our schoolmarmish empathy and respect, which they correctly interpret as civilizational weakness and a failure of morale. All they respect is force. That’s the most important truth we need to “understand.”

These 3 statements reveal political beliefs and character flaws that should automatically disqualify Hillary Clinton from being president. And even if we attribute them to rank ambition and venal opportunism rather than sincere belief, their sheer political stupidity and lack of prudence bespeak a mind and character unfit for leading the most powerful country on the planet.

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  • Bash Brannigan

    Great article and reminder of the arrogance of today’s progressive mindset. And all I can say to Hilary is, “Grow up!”

    • Tim Hains

      Mr.Thornton’s article is one short. The tape of her laughing over the rapist that she got off is disgusting and should disqualify her from the human race.

  • Joe The Gentile

    Here’s another beauty:

    “Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat.” -Hillary Clinton

    Some might say that she is, just a tiny bit, downplaying the seriousness of men’s losing their lives.

    That was from a prepared speech; it’s not an off-the-cuff blooper.

    • Juan Pablo

      I thought feminists like Shrillary thought men were unnecessary?

  • http://ruleofreason.blogspot.com/ Edward Cline

    I have the strong suspicion that Bill Clinton is not giving his estranged wife the benefit of his political savvy, because he hates her guts. He’s letting her fly on her own power and knows that inevitably she will fail and go splat.

  • El Cid

    “Showing respect even for one’s enemies. Trying to understand, in so far
    as psychologically possible, empathize with their perspective and point
    of view.”

    This is exactly the opposite of leadership. This is the problem we face. The current administration will not confront any ideology that is directly opposed to our way of life. That is why H. Clinton supported the Islamic version of the declaration of human rights at the UN. She just folded to their “perspective”.

    • carpe diem 36

      She is worse than an eediot, what we need is someone who will confront our enemies not sympathize with them. She is so wrong I wish she would just disappear, shut her mouth and just go somewhere where we cannot see or hear her. She is just as dumb as they come.

    • nimbii

      Internationalists want quiet victory, they need an undamaged infrastructure and the majority of undamaged silent citizens to produce wealth for them afterward.

  • carpe diem 36

    It is not bad politics, it is no politics, I never heard a single statement from this poseuress that either makes sense, shows that she understands economics, shows that she knows what she is even talking about – Nada!! the only thing she said that we must remember is “what difference does it make at this time” – this shows that she does not care about human lives, even the lives of her so called friends – she does not need friends, she does not have any – and should not be ever considered for high office. Just look at her bloody hands, and how she performed as so called secretary of state. May god protect us from this woman!!

    • Bandido

      Because the Republicans will not.

  • carpe diem 36

    Just remember that Huma is a Moslem. That is enough for me.

  • Bandido

    We can count on the craven Republicans to grovel before Hillary’s ‘brilliance’ and stifle any real criticism of her venality, incompetence, and ignorance. Accordingly, she will win in a landslide.

  • johnnywood

    No Hilderbeest in `16!

  • Raymond_in_DC

    “She then added a banal cliché of modern feminism, suggesting that the lack of women negotiators and signatories was responsible for the failure of many peace treaties.”

    Uh, two of the primary players in the so-far failing nuclear talks are Catherine Ashton, representing the EU, and Wendy Sherman, representing the US (at least when Kerry isn’t in town trying to salvage the talks).

  • Geppetto

    And what if she or her even more progressive, leftist, equally clueless opponent, Elisabeth Warren, is the democratic parties presidential nominee for 2016?

    Obama was the overwhelming choice of the progressives in 2008, most likely because he was a potentially historical figure, a serving Senator from Illinois, fairly good looking, educated, personable, half black, with impressive oratorical skills and previous experience as a community organizer who, with a professional media marketing team running the campaign, could be sold to a gullible, complacent, politically, and historically ignorant public built around the simple three word slogan of “hope and change.” Said public fell for it not once but twice.

    Has the public “learned their lesson” from the current debacle that is the Obama presidency? Should conservatives, republicans, libertarians and independents take comfort in the fact that Ms Clinton or Ms Warren are demonstrably so much further to the left than Barack Hussein Obama as to render either one incapable of defeating whoever their republican opponent?

    Don’t bet the farm! Nothing about the American electorate, the progressives or their equally progressive media campaign machine should ever be taken for granted again. When they get through campaigning for whoever the democratic nominee is they will be perceived as the next messiah, champion of the poor, the downtrodden, the old, the sick, the unemployed, etc. and their opponent will be the equivalent of Darth Vader unless the republicans are willing and able to fight fire with fire. The progressives have proven that allied with a complicit media, Academia and clueless Hollywood celebrities, they can turn Wiley Coyote into Abraham Lincoln.

  • cree

    If she is all bent on empathy, she should at least first consider our military and the Secret Service, let alone the rest of us and then decide in genuine humility to not run because only dupes and useful idiots are her supporters.

  • bigjulie

    What is really weird is how the Democrats keep playing the same old tired, mocked and laughed-at techniques to try to make us all believe that Hillary can’t be beat and will certainly be the next US Dictator. I have yet to find anybody who takes her PR campaign seriously…even my two Liberal Granddaughters in California. These people urinate away millions of dollars trying to put lipstick on a pig and never do a damned thing to help all those “starving children in China” I used to hear about from my Mother.
    I understand the California Legislature is re-considering their ban on Plastic Bags…so that Hillary can legally run there!

  • Lanna

    Shes just not gaining traction, people want new candidates.

  • USARetired

    Hillary is the direct result of America patronizing a demented irrational lunatic!