Expect former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to quickly be turned from hero of the Democratic Party for being a Republican willing to work for Barack Obama, into just more trailer trash because of his tell-all book about that service which reinforces an accurate meme about Hillary Clinton: She has no core, and will say anything to win.
From Chris Cillizza at WaPo, How Bob Gates’s memoir could haunt Hillary in 2016:
In a new memoir of his time as secretary of defense in the Obama administration, Gates writes: “Hillary told the president that her opposition to the [2007] surge in Iraq had been political because she was facing him in the Iowa primary. . . . The president conceded vaguely that opposition to the Iraq surge had been political. To hear the two of them making these admissions, and in front of me, was as surprising as it was dismaying.”
Oomph. Just to jog your memory, Clinton announced that she opposed the Iraq surge being pushed by President George W. Bush in the days leading up to the announcement of her presidential bid. She instead proposed a freeze in troop levels in the country and advocated for a troop increase in Afghanistan….
At one level, Gates’s allegation is not at all surprising. Politicians factor in politics when making decisions? Gasp! ….
But, remember this is Hillary Clinton we are talking about. And, the criticism that has always haunted her is that everything she does is infused with politics — that there is no core set of beliefs within her but rather just political calculation massed upon political calculation. Remember that she began slipping in the 2008 Democratic primary when her opponents seized on an overly political answer on giving drivers’ licenses to illegal immigrants during a debate in late 2007.
Gates’s version of why Clinton opposed the surge fits perfectly into this existing good-politics-makes-good-policy narrative about the former secretary of state. And that’s what makes it dangerous for her — and why you can be sure she (or her people) will (and must) dispute Gates’s recollection quickly and definitively.
(video h/t Marathon Pundit)
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“Hillary Clinton: She has no core, and will say anything to win.”
I disagree. She is a doctrinaire Collectivist, and will say anything to win.
Just like Pres. ScamWOW.
You are exactly right. If she has no core, then how does one explain the fact that she is rotten to said core?
Also, she must’ve spent time in the former Soviet Union. How do I know? Look at her dental work. Definitely Soviet era, circa 1975-77. She can clearly bite through hardened, quarter-inch plate steel.
Hillary told her dentist in 2006 that the work must be permanent . 70 years earlier Adolf gave his dentist the same message -this would be the last time .i
Well, there’s always gun control.
Faucahantus and her extreme leftists will be going for blood. The more liberal press will not provide cover.
Folks, please. Certainly Gates is right about Biden and Obama being consistently wrong.
But guess what? So has been Gates. Gates is the consummate neo-con. He is George Bush’s water boy. He was Bush’s water boy in the past and now because GWB has chosen to remain “above the fray”, GWB is pushing Gates back onto the national stage to carry Bush’s water (without Bush getting his “hands” dirty).
These people can’t F’ America enough. Stop listening to them. They are trying to convince you that you must choose between them and Obama. The choice at hand is not between the GWB neo-cons and Obama (no matter how bad Obama is).
The choice at hand is to discard both Obama and GWB and his neo-cons.
Death to the Republican Party
Long live the Tea Party.
“What difference, at this point, does it make…???”
I couldn’t disagree more, unfortunately. As of now, the choice is still between the GOP and the Dems. The GOAL is to get the Tea Party strong enough to become one of the choices; to replace the GOP entirely, but we’re far from being in that position yet.
Replacing GOP establishment people with Tea Party candidates who have no chance of beating the Dems does nothing but keep the Dems in power.
We need to work as hard as we can to get GOOD conservative candidates; but if they lose the primary, then we have to vote against whatever Dem is running.
Every time you vote for a spineless, establishment Republican you already have voted for a Democrat.
Will we have an initial period when Democrats win? Probably. Will it take this to burn into the minds of the Republican Party that the Party must either jump or die? Definitely.
The only way to stop voting for Democrats is to stop voting for RINOs and establishment Republicans.
Will we cease to exist as a free country during this “initial period” when the Democrats win? Probably.
But if you don’t care about that little detail; you’re absolutely right.
The other way to remove democrats is to increase conservative voter turnout to overcome the mail ballot fraud..
Gates no longer carries water for anybody but himself, hence the book for sale. The primary function of every cabinet secretary is to implement the policies of the President. No SecDef ever makes defense policy on his own. They certainly offer options and advice, but in the end they carry water for the Oval Office or they’re invited to go home. That’s the job description.
Taken collectively, the books written by GWB and his various cabinet secretaries gives a much better understanding of decision making during the Bush administrations than getting your history from MSNBC or Fox. Or a bumper sticker. Those history makers all had differing points of view on the same events, different responsibilities and different tolerances for policies that nagged their conscience. I haven’t read Gates’s book, but I’m pretty sure he can give you a more accurate account of his time as SecDef than anybody else. Time and other accounts will give us an indication of how truthful he’s been.
As for GWB being “above the fray”, I’m glad the man has had enough class to recognize that his time is done, he’s retired and his opinions are of little value to others. Quite unlike the Clinton whore who can’t seem to find relevance not involving a camera and a microphone. And maybe a cigar.
I’m sure that Jimmuh Carville already got, “The Call” concerning Gates.
It takes a village to raise such a woman: all connections and no core.
A “Potemkin Village” no less!
This is a woman who stayed with her serial-philanderer, accused-rapist husband in order to preserve her own political ambitions. Where I come from we call such a woman a whore.
3….2….1…. Blast Off
Hillary Clinton needn’t lift a finger to push Gates off the stage. That will be done for her soon enough. Every media lib in America is this moment dusting their Bob Gates oppo files and coordinating how they’ll torpedo him for her.
But Henry, the GOP establishment will come immediately to his defense!
What… people like Senator Jeff Flake? Hahaahahahaaa. Henry, yer a moron.
“Sen. Jeff Flake disses Robert Gates for dissing Obama..”
http://twitchy.com/2014/01/07/sen-jeff-flake-disses-robert-gates-for-dissing-obama-conservatives-slam/
Robert Gates is a pismire Washington mandarin. I have zero respect for him. If he had any moral courage and been an actual public servant not a toady to power he would have spoken up about these matters contemporaneously when his words and actions could have made a difference. His resignation might have had an impact. One more belated memoir in which perceptions of honesty must be conflated with a sensationalist need to sell books is meaningless.
The Clinton body count is reputedly between 40 to 100 people who were inconvenient. Funny, Gates never seemed like the “suicide in a basement” type of guy.
Vince Foster couldn’t be reached for comment.
(And I fully acknowledge that those body count stories are just “conspiracy theories”, but I did notice that – if you Google search on “Clinton friends and mysterious deaths”, you see lots of sites “debunking” those silly old stories. Someone’s been busy doing spring cleaning on the Internet – must be that Vast Right Wing Conspiracy again, I sure wish I’d get my check for helping propagate such nonsense!)
Daddy Bush should have hundreds on his “dead aquantance” list, but I don’t recall any such list. Should have been a snap.
“Politics” are a legitimate and valid reason for military, legislative and public elected office executive economic decision making, and perhaps the MOST legitimate and most VALID reason.
George Washington’s strongly stated and clearly observed ideals and his earnest practice of non-partisanship are exemplars, but not of being absent of politics — rather of a style of politics which is non-partisan Washington’s strident insistence upon a energetic executive, and his own taking direct command of the Army in the field during the Whiskey Rebellion are political motives. He saw that the President had to be able to forcefully implement national policy, according to the will of the President.
Today we confuse the disruptive social forces of “partisanship and faction” with what we call “politics”.
Was Hillary’s stance on the Iraqi surge non-partisan politics or partisan politics? It was partisan politics but also not partisan — she had to survive, this was the way she played it. George Washington set an ideal of non-partisanship, yet John Adams the second President, marked a clear break with that ideal in the Alien and Sedition Acts. And so did Jefferson with his battles against Adams .. the Presidential election of 1800 was incredibly partisan, and the partisan political model in America had intensely developed during Washington’s term.
We have been blessed in America by the history that nearly all Presidents once in office following elections and careers of intense partisanship, have nevertheless conducted foreign policy and military action, naval boldness and wars, abroad following George Washington’s model of non-partisan politics. There are of course, some digressions from that model — Wilson, I think, the worst, but still in a non-partisan frame, shading towards partisanship. But Obama has gone far beyond, into abject partisanship in statecraft and conduct of the military in actions and wars abroad.
Bipartisanship is NOT non-partisanship. It is perhaps the anti-thesis of non-partisanship.
Some one has already coined it ‘Gatesgate”.
There should be a caption contest for that pic.
“Mrs Clinton , the Sanitorium called to say you are allowed to go back home.”
Hillary Clinton truly personifies the word “scum,” as well as “failure.”
She’s stale toast.
How’s this for a new tid-bit:
It turns out that Hillary Clinton was fired from the Watergate congressional committee for lying and unethical behavior:
http://iowntheworld.com/blog/?p=220436