Can The Republicans Defeat Hillary Clinton?
1 comment July 22nd, 2007
Among Republican Party leadership circles, it is accepted as gospel that Hillary Rodham Clinton will be the Democratic Party presidential nominee in 2008. Despite the public talk by some in the GOP that Hillary would be the easiest Democrat to run against, those in the know are in a state of depression, realizing that virtually all of the announced (and soon to announce) Republican presidential candidates face a hopeless challenge in 2008.
Karl Rove, “Bush’s Brain” according to one documentary film, predicts that the Iraq war will not be a campaign issue in 2008. That is wishful thinking in the extreme. Iraq, both as a strategic blunder and an example of Bush incompetence, will be the dominating issue in the presidential campaign. The Clinton political machine and the media will see to it. That leaves the Republican nominee, whoever it is, with two very bad choices. He can either defend the Bush presidency, which is nothing more than a certain prescription for defeat. Or, he can distance himself from President Bush, even running against his record. Many pundits speculate that this is the most likely course for the Republican nominee to follow. The problem with that strategy is that it plays directly into the hands of Hillary Clinton. It will keep the American electorate fixated on the perception of a bungling Republican administration. In that scenario, how does the Republican challenger make the case that the GOP should be trusted to fix the mistakes engineered by a two-term Republican presidency?
The bottom line is that many savvy Republican partisans are already quietly conceding that Hillary Clinton will be elected president in 2008, and are begining to think of candidates who can restore Republican presidential rule in 2012. And the name most frequently mentioned? It’s Jeb Bush, former Florida governor and brother of the current President Bush. With thinking like that, it looks like the country is headed towards another 8 years of Clinton rule.
