Same old Hillary ... Still turning voters off

You gotta love this. The American Spectator caught up with the Clinton campaign in Iowa where she had a pointed and arrogant exchange with a voter in the audience:

Hillary Clinton is working hard to counter her image as an arrogant Ice Queen. At campaign stops, she laughs at her own jokes and regales the audience with tales of herself as a little girl who stared into the sky with binoculars hoping to catch a glimpse of Sputnik as it passed by.

"Give me a fair reading as to who I am, not who somebody says I am," Clinton pleaded with a room full of Iowa voters as she wrapped up her remarks at a campaign stop here on Sunday.

But just moments later, in a rare stumble for her highly-choreographed campaign, Clinton demonstrated that people's long-standing impressions of her are right on target.

During the question and answer period, Randall Rolph, a retired Democratic voter from Nashua, Iowa, confronted Clinton on her recent vote in favor of a U.S. Senate resolution calling on the Bush administration to declare Iran's Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. The measure has been greeted with suspicion by war critics who view it as a document that President Bush could use as a pretext to launch an attack on Iran.

"Why should I support your candidacy if you haven't learned from the past?" Rolph asked, referring to her 2002 vote to authorize the use of military force in Iraq.

Clinton first thanked him and then countered that, "the premise of the question is wrong." So far, so good. But after offering a description of what was in the resolution, Clinton smugly and dismissively accused him of having been fed the information, saying "obviously somebody sent [it] to you."

Rolph didn't let it pass. "I take exception, this is my own research..."

"Well, then let me finish telling you..." Clinton screamed.

"Nobody sent that, and I am offended that you would suggest it," Rolph snapped at her. Realizing she had committed a blunder, she backed off.

"Then I apologize," she said. "I apologize, it's just that I've been asked the very same question at three other places."

Later, she patronizingly told him "I respect your research," but instructed him that there were two versions of the bill, and she opposed an earlier draft that had harsher language. "We just have a disagreement," she concluded. "I know what I voted for, and I know what we intended to do with it."

The crowed filled with supporters may have applauded, but Rolph was turned off. He said he came into the event uncommitted, but ruled out voting for Clinton after she insinuated that he was a patsy even though he had spent the morning on government websites looking into the question himself.

"It was an insult," he fumed following the event. "It was basically calling me stupid. That I can't think on my own. That I don't have the ability to research or come up with a coherent or concrete thought on my own. How dare she!"

He continued, "She never did answer the question. She just, what I say is, bitch-slapped me."

Whether this incident does any damage to the well-oiled Clinton machine remains to be seen. But one thing it does make clear is that no matter how scripted Hillary is, over the course of a long campaign, she will not be able to mask her contempt for average Americans who dare to challenge her.

And that, folks, is the lesson of the day. No matter how hard they may try to mask their contempt of the average voter, it always manages to shine through. If you ask them a question that they find distasteful, or challenge them on something that they ardently defend (such as her new/old healthcare plan) they lash out and accuse you of being stupid or partisan hacks. This is today's modern Democrat Party. It's not your dad's or grandpa's party any longer. That party died decades ago, and it's not showing any signs of returning anytime soon. Even though the LA Times presented an @$$-kissing puff-piece today, and despite the fact that more than a couple pundits have stated she will win we maintain the rule of negatives.

They are sitting at 49% right now, and have been for months. She is, by far, one of the most facetious and polarizing figures in Washington, DC right now. As the primaries wear on, and the rumn for the White House gears up, pundits are going to be punching holes in her ideas left and right. And no, the crocodile tear-filled diatribe of "they're picking on me," isn't going to wash either. She may have tghe cash, but we doubt she has the ability to convince enough people that she's the right person to be in the White House.

For her, it comes down to a quote from a current White House official quoted in Bill Sammon's newest book, "The Evangelical President." The unnamed official said this, which best sums up what Senator Clinton's uphill battle will be:

‘Think about it. She’s going to be essentially saying elect me president after I’ve spent the last sixteen years in your face, and you don’t like me much when I was here last, give me eight more years so I can be a presence in your life for 24 years.'

A quarter century of Hillary Clinton? And we thought it was bad having Ted Kennedy around for forty-five years. At least he had the brains to drop out of his bid for the presidency.

Publius II