Hillary Reads the Handwriting On the Wall

With Obama's economic incoherence and international fecklessness drawing appalled ridicule the world around, the eyes of many American Democrats are straying in a Clintonian direction.  The article "Why Hillary Clinton must run in 2012" in the LA Times is merely the most blunt voice among many.

For Hillary Rodham Clinton, seeking ultimate power is as natural as breathing.  What, then, are we to make of her recent interview with Wolf Blitzer?

Q- If the president is reelected, do you want to serve a second term as secretary of state?

No

Q- Would you like to serve as secretary of defense?

No

Q- Would you like to be vice president of the United States?

No

Q- Would you like to be president of the United States?

No

We cannot recall the last time any politician, much less a Clinton, made a reply leaving so little wiggle-room to change their mind later.  Wolf didn't even ask if she was planning to run for President; he asked if she wanted to be President, yet the answer was "No."  Most Scragged readers, to say nothing of our writers, wouldn't answer quite as negatively.

It's possible that she's lying - lying comes as naturally to Clintons as seeking power - but what would be the point?  It's conceivable that her long-stilled biology is at long last reasserting itself and she'd truly rather spend her declining years holding grandchildren than Presidential Daily Briefs.  And if you believe that, well, we can't do much for you.

There is another more plausible explanation: Hillary knows where we are headed, she knows that she herself cannot stop it, and she does not want to be at the helm when we get there.

Been There, Done That, Shared the T-Shirt

Of all the people on the planet, she knows better than anyone besides Bill how a liberal Democrat got a shellacking for trying to force Hillarycare on an unwilling electorate.  She saw that after Pres. Clinton lost his Congressional majorities as punishment, he listened to the voters.  He cut a sacred liberal spending program by "ending welfare as we know it."

The result?  He was re-elected.  Hillary saw that following the will of the people led to a Clinton legacy of having a budget surplus and a prosperous economy at the same time!  A Boston Globe op-ed admitted that poor people were better off after Clinton's reforms!  Cutting spending helped the poor, too!

She has also witnessed Pres. Obama taking a worse shellacking than Bill without changing his policies one whit.  Her husband's changes led to prosperity, re-election, and his being well-remembered.  Mr. Obama's stubbornness will put us under and she knows it.

She Knows the Score - 4th and Real Long

Given her decades-long connections to every power center in the world and throughout the bureaucracy, Hillary probably has better sources of information than Mr. Obama does.  Barack Obama is famous for throwing people under the bus when they make him unhappy; the Clintons, in contrast, are so well-known for loyalty that their minions commit crimes to protect them, secure in the confidence that they'll be rescued from on high.

During the Obamacare fights, the Congressional Budget Office, who are required by law to tell the truth, ran the numbers and said Obamacare would cost a lot more than the President said it would.  Mr. Obama reamed out the head of the CBO, a lifetime bureaucrat who's served under both parties with nary a squeak.

Suppose you're a troll in the basement and you discover bad news that would reflect poorly on something Obama said or did.  Would you tell him?  Of course not - he'll kill the messenger - but you might get word to Hillary.  If it's a juicy enough tidbit, a reward will come your way as surely as the sun rises in the East.

Savor the bitter taste of regret.

America Weighed and Found Wanting

We're the greediest generation in history.  We've stolen our parents' savings through inflation and letting interest rates go to zero.  We've stolen our grandchildren's future by burying them in debt.

Our national debt and grotesque overspending have been a concern for many years.  What's new is how blatant and dire the warnings are becoming: the Congressional Budget Office, no less, reportedly is throwing up its hands in horror at the pending apocalypse despite Mr. Obama's rants about their Obamacare cost estimates:

“I asked CBO to run the model going out and they told me that their computer simulation crashes in 2037 because CBO can’t conceive of any way in which the economy can continue past the year 2037 because of debt burdens,” said [House Budget Chairman Congressman Paul] Ryan.

It's one thing to read predictions of gloom on the Internet.  Doom-saying is not unheard-of from partisan politicians, but it's quite another thing when high-ranking, knowledgeable bureaucrats say that tax dollars - their lifeblood, their very reason for existence - simply won't be there for them.

Conservatives often forget that their opponents are not stupid.  Wrong, yes; greedy, often; evil, sometimes; but morons they are not, and Hillary most especially not.  She knows how to count; she is well aware that the national debt is more than we can ever pay with no end in sight.  Unlike many Democratic voters, she also knows that taxing the rich won't produce enough money, nor will hammering the middle class.

Paul Ryan's budget proposal has put the stark truth in front of the American people in a way so blunt, so plain, and so painful that even the media cannot fully obscure it.  Mr. Ryan has made it clear that our only hope to have an economic future is to slash and burn our way through government in a way that has never before happened in all of human history outside of revolution or conquest, though even he doesn't go as far as we must.

Furthermore, despite the ongoing chorus of "It's all Bush's fault!" all America knows that the great bulk of our deficit and debt were created under President Obama (D).  They also know that although the Republicans stole a lot of our money, virtually all of the rest of the debt came from a Democratic Congress.  Bush's wars and Republican spending certainly didn't help, but that debt was dwarfed long ago.

When Something Can't Go On, It Won't

In the very near future, one of two things will happen.  The first possibility, foreshadowed in the Ryan budget proposal, is that our governmental systems will be so drastically downsized as to bear no resemblance to what Americans have known all their lives and throw countless hundreds of thousands of reliable Democrat voters into the street.

If that doesn't happen soon, our government and our economy will collapse, throwing most of America out into the street.  Either way, whoever's at the helm when it happens will carry the can, Democrats most of all.

Barack Obama somehow seems to still believe the old lie of Karl Marx: that a complex, modern, high-tech economy can be successfully run from the top down.  Hillary knows better: she knows it simply can't be done, or at the very least can't be done by anyone she knows or can hire.

What would be a better legacy: to be the first woman President, the one which presided over national collapse and bankruptcy?

Or to be the spurned candidate, foolish voters having instead chosen an incompetent neophyte who destroyed his country and his party despite her best efforts to help him?

The choice is obvious: only one offers hope for the future.  No, not for Hillary's political future, but a future for Chelsea, the pending heir to the abandoned dream of national prosperity and strength under a reigning Clinton!

Ever since his departure from the White House, Bill Clinton has concentrated on enshrining his legacy, with some success.  It's just possible that - surprise! - Hillary is concerned with how her legacy will fare in a way that, for once in her life, is being characteristically female.  Cherish the irony.