
Might be time to get off Facebook. Already, otherwise sensible people I know are beginning to talk up ‘Hillary in 2016’. I shouldn’t be surprised; it must take some effort, and some practice, to persuade oneself into a state of enthusiasm for this monster. You’d want to get an early start.
These aspiring auto-hypnotists are, of course, some of the same people who delight in making fun of the poor Teabaggers. Now admittedly, the latter are rather silly. But if — it doesn’t seem likely, but if — somebody like Rand Paul is the Republican nominee in 2016, then although I don’t ordinarily buy the lesser-evil argument, as applied to duopoly electoral politics, I might make an exception in this case. There can surely be no reasonable doubt that Rand Paul would be a much lesser evil than Hillary.
Here’s the New York Times:
Are Neocons Getting Ready to Ally With Hillary Clinton?
WASHINGTON — AFTER nearly a decade in the political wilderness, the neoconservative movement is back, using the turmoil in Iraq and Ukraine to claim that it is President Obama, not the movement’s interventionist foreign policy that dominated early George W. Bush-era Washington, that bears responsibility for the current round of global crises.
Even as they castigate Mr. Obama, the neocons may be preparing a more brazen feat: aligning themselves with Hillary Rodham Clinton and her nascent presidential campaign, in a bid to return to the driver’s seat of American foreign policy.
The idea that neocons have been in the ‘wilderness’ during the Obie years seems rather strange to me, though of course Hillary is and always has been much more deeply committed to the neocon program than the pathetic outgunned nonentity who currently lives in the White House, desperately trying to split all the differences he can find. Even stranger, then, is the idea that an alliance between neocons and Hillary might be something to express in the future tense or subjunctive mood. The Clintons — and Hillary in particular — have always been committed, aggressive interventionists and sedulous water-carriers for Israel. From a neocon point of view, what’s not to like?
The Times item itself implicitly acknowledges the fact — as usual with the Times, you get to the good stuff around paragraph 17 or so:
Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, noted in The New Republic this year that “it is clear that in administration councils [Hillary] was a principled voice for a strong stand on controversial issues, whether supporting the Afghan surge or the intervention in Libya.”
… Mrs. Clinton voted for the Iraq war; supported sending arms to Syrian rebels; likened Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, to Adolf Hitler; wholeheartedly backs Israel; and stresses the importance of promoting democracy.
The Hitler comparison is like a Masonic handshake for the neocon brotherhood. Here he is again, folks! Good old Adolf Hitler! What would we do without him? And of course we all know what ‘promoting democracy’ means in this context; it means aerial bombardment, and often enough it means boots on the ground — though never, alas, Max Boots on the ground.
My friends — the ones who will undoubtedly work themselves up into a lather of hysterical enthusiasm for this Lady Macbeth, by the time 2016 rolls around — will surely point out that Hillary is relatively gay-friendly and favors abortion. Which is undoubtedly true. These are good things, and might arguably tip the scales if she weren’t also an aspiring mass murderer.
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Update — July 9
I spoke too soon, of course. Even a Teabagger can be smart enough to sell out. Here’s young Rand in National Review recently:
How many times must Israel hear this call? Children are murdered — please show restraint. Cafés and buses are bombed — please show restraint. Towns are victimized by hundreds of rockets — please show restraint while you bury your dead once again.
I think it is clear by now: Israel has shown remarkable restraint. It possesses a military with clear superiority over that of its Palestinian neighbors, yet it does not respond to threat after threat, provocation after provocation, with the type of force that would decisively end their conflict.
But sometimes restraint can work against you. Sometimes you just have to say, enough is enough.
So back to Square One. The lesser-evil theory is as dead as it’s always been.