Dick Morris has written an excellent piece explaining a problem that the Hilldabeast will have during the 2006 Election cycle:

Former President Bill Clinton’s thesis, articulated on “Meet the Press,� is that “large� figures in their parties who are elected to lesser offices should not be asked to commit to serving out their full terms so that when duty calls they are free to answer.

It’s advice he failed to heed for himself when he was governor of Arkansas. Then he just resorted to his frequent M.O. and lied, telling the voters that he was going to serve out his full term when he had no real intention of doing so — if he could help it.

But Arkansas is not New York, and the relatively unknown Bill Clinton of 1990 is not the Hillary Clinton of 2005. Hillary must come squarely face to face with an unpleasant fact: If she won’t commit to serving a full term in the Senate, she may not win reelection to the seat.

In other words, she isn’t going to able to get away with lying through her teeth to the voters anymore, like she did in the 2000 Election when she claimed she was a Yankees fan even though it was common knowledge that she had been a long time Cubs fan. Anyone who has witnessed a campaign run by the Clintons knows that one of the biggest weapons in their campaign arsenal is saying whatever they have to to get into office, then turning around and doing whatever they want once they’re in office. Simply put, you can’t believe a word they say during a campaign speech.

Most senators can escape having to declare that they will serve out a full term. But Hillary can’t because of the unique way she came to New York state. Had the first lady decided to run for senator in Delaware or Indiana or some such state, voters would have assumed she just moved in to run. But she moved to New York state and assured us all that she was vindicating a lifelong dream to move to the Big Apple. So many people have done so, and New Yorkers’ egos are such that they believed that Hillary had just felt the same magic gravitational pull the city seems to exert on people.

But now she is using New York state as a steppingstone. As Pirro said in her announcement (the part of the text she could find), “Hillary asked us to put out the welcome mat and we did so. But now she wants us to become a doormat and that we will never do.�

So what will the Hilldabeast do? Will she smile and say, “Of course I am going to serve my entire Senatorial term,” and then declare her candidacy for President less than two years later? Will she be candid with New Yorkers and say that she can’t rule out the possibility that she is going to run for President? I think the answer is obvious; she’ll say whatever she has to in order to get elected, and then do whatever she wants.

What about New Yorkers? Will they swallow her disception? Well, they bought her line of crap in 2000 and elected her as their Senate representative, so anything’s possible. However, Morris doesn’t think so:

Armed with the doubts of New Yorkers about Hillary’s fealty and protected by her social liberalism, Pirro will make a very effective challenger. She will almost certainly make the race closer than the 12 points that separated Hillary from her 2000 Republican challenger, Rep. Rick Lazio. And Pirro will make her work hard and spend tens of millions of dollars.

And she might just beat Hillary. Which raises the question: Why is Hillary running for reelection to a job she wants to leave? New Yorkers will all be asking, so Hillary might want to ask herself.

Let’s hope Morris is correct and the people of New York, who have suffered enough recently, can scratch this blemish from their record.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 21st, 2005 at 11:44 am by Nick, and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.