Hillary's model is Margaret Thatcher.

[chieftain]

Clinton and her advisors have decided that to be the first woman president she needs to project a tough persona reminiscent of the Iron Lady of the UK. It may be that image is merely a political calculation rather than a window into what we could expect from a second Clinton administration. But it is troubling regardless of whether it is just political artifice or a wrongheaded world view.
I have always thought that the health care train wreck authored by the former first lady was clear cut evidence that she has a tin ear where politics is involved. Her recent answers to questions regarding her vote on the IWR confirm my judgment that she is not a deft politician.The danger is that a person can be prisoners to their rhetoric.
If her refusal to acknowledge that her vote was intrinsically wrong is evidence of an unnecessarily belligerent view of the world, then we cannot possibly support her candidacy. The fact that W and his band of clueless thugs has made a royal hash of the war does not absolve those who still believe that "victory" was possible but for the administration's incompetence.
Whether Hillary is acting out of political calculation or deep seated belief makes little difference. America and the world cannot afford another US president who has a compelling need to demonstrate their toughness.

[ShortnFiery]

1. Margaret Thatcher is an old, but polished "Ann Coulter"

Both women are repulsive examples of our female gender. :puke:

[pretzel4gore]

16. here's what a guy named george eliot had to say:

"There were women in Raveloe, at the present time, who had worn one of the wise woman's little bags around their necks, and never had an idiot child (like george bush) as Ann Coulter had."
Silas Marner, pg 20, NAL 1960

[tblue37]

35. The novelist George Eliot was not a guy.

Mary Ann Evans wrote under a male name because female novelists were not taken seriously, and also because they often found it hard to get their work published. (The Bronte sisters also published under male psuedonyms--Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell--at first.)

[Vidar]

41. Good catch. Same for "George Sands".

[tblue37]

45. Since I teach college English, it was actually not a catch.

Stuff like that is in my DNA.

[pretzel4gore]

56. she sure is a fabulous writer!

her sentences sometime strike me as gems, crafted at top skill level! I thought Emily Bronte was THEE best, but George Eliot ...woow!

[The Backlash Cometh]

36. Isn't Thatcher a Tory?

[Morgana LaFey]

38. Rightwinger for SURE. Reagan's best friend. Ewwww is all I can say.

:puke:

[LeftishBrit]

46. Yes, ewwww, but I haven't yet seen any evidence that Clinton admires Thatcher!

I'm not a great Hillary Clinton fan; but I think it's just as bad to accuse someone of Thatcherism on the grounds of vague guilt-by-association, as to accuse someone of e.g. Communism or terrorist sympathies on such grounds. Especially when the association seems to be just 'both are women who come across as tough'.

As far as I'm concerned, Thatcher is the devil!

[Ninga]

2. Although planning and calculation are for sure part of her campaign, I believe for the

most part she owns her demeanor and attitudes.

[mtnsnake]

3. Maybe that's why Bill cheated on her

I mean, who wants to bang an iron lady? :shrug:

[Warpy]

4. Maybe Hillary needs to go to the UK

and ask ordinary people she runs into like hotel maids and waiters just what they think of that old right wing biddy.

Just because the well off adored her doesn't mean the majority did.

[IndianaGreen]

5. An American version of Thatcherism is not what this country needs.

Haven't we had enough of testosterone-driven foreign policies?

Hillary may share one trait with Maggie Thatcher, the one trait that brought Thatcher down by her own Tories: arrogance!

[Captain Hilts]

6. Wow, what a presumptuous, sexist thread. nt

[chieftain]

7. How so?

[Captain Hilts]

10. There's no reason for Hillary to use MT as a role model and she didn't say so.

They both have falopian tubes. So what?

Thatcher came to the fore in a parliamentary system and became famous for taking milk funds from school children. Her experience and her politics have nothing in common with Clinton. Unless you can't get past the falopian tubes.

[chieftain]

11. I did not claim that she has said Thatcher is her model. But

it puzzles me that Hillary has not budged from her position that the Iraq Resolution was not the wrong vote but only that Bush lied and screwed up the mission. My inference from her increasingly unsupportable explanations of what I believe to be the wrong vote on the most important issue to come before her is that she has concluded that she cannot be seen as weak on matters of national security. This has nothing to do with fallopian tubes. The physical condition that I see was a lack of spine for those that wanted to protect their viability for higher office.That condition of lack of backbone was suffered by both genders, see Kerry and Edwards.
Thatcher as the first woman PM of the UK was lauded for her toughness. It seems logical to me that Hillary would look to her as a model for the image that she is trying to project in regard to international policies. It strikes me as very unlikely that her strategy is not informed by Thatcher's acceptance.

[mtnsnake]

8. Why? Hillary's been working overtime to avoid looking "too much like a woman"

when it comes to national security. Sexist or not, she knows that the rednecks and anyone else who are gung-ho about security aren't about to consider a woman for president if she's perceived by their narrow minds as being soft on national security because of her sex. Yeah, it's a ridiculous notion, but she knows she has to overcompensate in a hawkish way to rid those narrow-minded voters of the perception that she won't be tough enough on them terrorists out there waiting in the woods to kill us all.

I like Hillary alright, and I also think it's a shame that she has to overcompensate because she is a woman. But that's just the way it is, unfortunately.

[Missy M]

9. Did Hillary say her model is Margaret Thatcher?

[oasis]

17. Hillary's first choice was Napoleon but she only got a B+ in French.

:sarcasm:

[SOS]

24. No, that was her campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe

"Hillary Clinton is to be presented as America’s Margaret Thatcher as she tries to become the first woman to win the White House. As she entered the 2008 presidential race yesterday, a senior adviser said that her campaign would emphasise security, defence and personal strengths reminiscent of the Iron Lady.
“Their policies are totally different but they are both perceived as very tough,” said Terry McAuliffe, Clinton’s campaign chairman. “She is strong on foreign policy. People have got to know you are going to keep them safe.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article1294961.ece

[SaveElmer]

12. No...the left wing of the Party wants to make her the model...

Another disingenous attempt by the left to tarnish her by associating her with someone at the polar opposite of her ideologically...

Pathetic...desperate tactics....

[chieftain]

14. Then please explain to me why she refuses acknowledge

that her vote was wrong not just that she was mislead and/of W screwed up what otherwise would have been a worthwhile venture?

[SaveElmer]

15. No reason to...

Her vote was perfectly reasonable at the time, based on history and evidence presented...

As I have explained on countless occasions!

[chieftain]

18. Well your and her explanations don't cut it with a lot of us.

What vote did she cast that was more important for her to get right than the one on Iraq? Would the world been better off if W's adventure had not ended in the debacle it has? Is that Hillary's position? If so that is more frightening than her decisions being based on calculation. We can little afford another administration that believes that military power can spread democracy and that gunpowder is better than diplomacy. In my opinion the Iraq War is not only a travesty, it is immoral. I worry about putting someone in the oval office that sees this as merely a failure of execution.

[SaveElmer]

19. So be it...

I have confidence in my position and in hers...se we will have to agree to disagree...

[chieftain]

20. Fair enough.

[Captain Hilts]

34. Then vote for someone else. I'm voting Clark or Richardson. nt

[Captain Hilts]

23. If people would only take the time to watch/read her statement when making the vote.

I fault her for not explaining her vote now as she did then.

But, "enforcing the UN sanctions" isn't a blank check to wage war and occupy Iraq.

The Iraq War is George W. Bush's fault, not the senate's.

[ShortnFiery]

25. You can't tell me that The Senate did not KNOW that Bush was going

in and invading Iraq? That vote SEALED the deal, and every damn Senator who voted for the IRW is also guilty of enabling our Idiot King who will, most likely, without approval, bomb Iran and start WWIII.

She helped enable this madman, and yes, I fault her and every other Senator who voted for the IWR. :grr:

[Pachamama]

44. I think a vote that was perfectly reasonable at the time was my Senator Boxer's vote...

and she voted "No".

Every time I hear Hillary Clinton try to justify her vote, I literally find myself cringing and shaking my head. It turns me off more and more as I hear her justify it. She would gain so much more support and respect from so many and many like myself who have a really hard time with this.

[welshTerrier2]

13. cartoon anyone?

http://cartoonbox.slate.com/hottopic/?image=22&topicid=131

[oasis]

21. Yet another "cartoonist" who needs to keep his day job.(n/t)

[tigereye]

22. that's ridiculous

the parallels between Hillary and Maggie are few. Maggie's an evil, grasping, incaring, institution-destroying, iron-willed witch. Hillary at least seems capable of some compassion.

The origninal comment is an awful statement to see on a liberal website.

[ShortnFiery]

26. I see no emotion in Senator Clinton that is not, IMO, contrived.

Nope, that hard corps warmongering rhetoric is very reminiscent of the UK's Iron Lady. :puke:

[tigereye]

27. most "emotion" from politicians is contrived

that doesn't make the argument. One of the conditions of being a president or PM, of any country, or a Senator, for that matter, sadly, is deciding when to go to war.

[ShortnFiery]

29. You just reversed yourself.

:wtf: over. I'm at a loss for any sort of rationale. :shrug:

[tigereye]

50. I don't see your difficulty....

feel free to explain...

she could be somewhat compassionate and still nuance a lot of her statements....

[CTLawGuy]

40. I don't see anything in her that's not contrived

This woman moved to a state she had barely been to just to run for Senate. She put on a Yankees hat and said, I've always been a Yankees fan - even though she's from Chicago.

When the flag burning issue came up, she tried to triangulate by proposing some bill to ban flag burning on federal property as if that would make any difference.

She told Russ Feingold, when he was trying to ban soft money in politics, to "live in the real world."

She called young people "lazy" ignoring the fact that America is hemhorraging jobs because of free trade agreements she votes for. She had to apologize to her own daughter.

[paulk]

52. what hard corps (sic) warmongering rhetoric is that?

As least you could have the courtesy of backing up your smears with some links or quotes....

[LeftishBrit]

28. Is there any evidence for this? Has she said so?

It may be because Thatcher is arch-villain to any left-of-centre UK-er; but I can't help perceiving a degree of sexism in comparisons between Hillary Clinton and Maggie Thatcher. It implies: "All assertive female politicians are the same person." If you honestly think that Clinton's policies are exactly the same as Thatcher's, then you have a right to that opinion; but I don't get that impression. She's not my favourite among the Dems, but if I was comparing Thatcher to someone, it would be Ronnie, not any Democrat.

[chieftain]

30. I was thinking only of Thatcher's image of toughness

on international issues not on domestic matters.I freely admit that Clinton and Thatcher have little if anything in common on social/economic matters. But Iraq has raised the concept of wars of
choice to the forefront of my thinking. Meanwhile Hillary has continued to cling to a position that is not reassuring that she understands the innate immorality and stupidity of what we have done in Iraq.

[pepperbear]

31. I like the idea of a "tough" Democrat

no matter which gender it happens to be.

[Moderate Dem]

32. Sorry, I posted this

on our drummer's account, just saw the username...

[chieftain]

33. I would like that toughnesss to be leavened with

intelligence and a profound aversion to wars of choice.

[eridani]

48. You mean being a cheerleader for mass murder?

Or did you maybe me tough on corporations?

[EndElectoral]

37. "Her privatization programs led to union opposition, labor unrest, and high unemployment rates"

Why...why ..why would you model yourself after her?

[Captain Hilts]

39. There's no evidence she does. nt

[LeftishBrit]

47. I hope no one would - but *does* Hillary Clinton? I don't think so.

And as far as I can see, even the OP was accusing Clinton of being Thatcherite simply on foreign policy issues, not on economic issues.

[burrowowl]

42. Oh my GOD! Nooooooo!

She is too DLC for me. Thatcher, ICK! UGH! Extreme RW and wonder who licked whose ass RayGun or Thatcher?

[fuzzyball]

43. The other two WOMEN heads of state were equally tough...

Golda Meir of Israel was very tough lady.
Indira Gandhi of India, the largest democracy in the world,
was very tough lady.
Ditto for Margaret Thatcher.

Hillary Clinton wants to be in the same league.
I can't blame her. It would not look good to be a sissy
and be a woman head of state.

[bigdarryl]

49. Thatcher was for WAR WAR WAR. so doe's this mean Hillary is for the same thing

[AJH032]

51. more baseless "facts"

No proof, no justification of the claims, nothing. Can't say I'm surprised.

[enough already]

53. Great, now she wants to be Margaret Thatcher.

Just what we need...another nazi.

[LeftishBrit]

54. Still asking: does she SAY she wants to be?

Without clear facts, that's a bit like saying that someone is a 'communist' or 'pro-terrorism', by association, rather than through solid evidence.

I'm speaking here not as a Hillary-supporter (I don't vote in America, and if I did, would prefer some of the other candidates) but as someone who regards Thatcher as the root of much evil in my country, and thinks that accusations of Thatcherism should not be made lightly.

We have IMO to be careful to avoid all 'swiftboating', even from the left.

[Dr Fate]

58. Her campaign manager said it for her a few days ago (link)

If she disagrees with her own campaign, I need to hear HER say it.

"Hillary Clinton is to be presented as America’s Margaret Thatcher as she tries to become the first woman to win the White House. As she entered the 2008 presidential race yesterday, a senior adviser said that her campaign would emphasise security, defence and personal strengths reminiscent of the Iron Lady.
“Their policies are totally different but they are both perceived as very tough,” said Terry McAuliffe, Clinton’s campaign chairman. “She is strong on foreign policy. People have got to know you are going to keep them safe.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article1294...

[chieftain]

59. I think there is value in being careful in the use of "Swiftboating".

To me there is a huge distinction between lying about the contemporaneous as well as official account of heroism on the part of John Kerry, compare to a personal perception of Hillary's campaign image.Although I make no claim that Clinton is making the comparison, I have seen some of her supporters explaining Hillary's toughness on foreign an military policies. On hearing this, my personal reaction was to think of Thatcher. This is a matter of grave concern for me, since toughness for the sake of appearing tough is part of how we got ourselves in the mess we are now in. Hillary's unwillingness to come to grips with the intrinsic immorality plus the stupidity of our preventive war in Iraq is equally troubling.
It seems likely to me that Hillary's consultants are well aware of Thatcher's successful effort to portray herself as tough enough to handle the job of PM. As patently unfair as it is, conventional political insiders believe that the bar on national security will be higher for the first woman to have an excellent chance to become President. So although they may not use the phrase "Thatcheresque", the rhetoric the campaign prompted my thought.
My reference to Thatcher was meant to refer only to international politics. On social issues she is as far from Thatcher as can be.I admit that the post would have been clearer if I ha said so in the OP

[LeftishBrit]

60. I should also have clarified: I wasn't really referring to your post

Of course, a *perception* is not swiftboating - so thinking that Hillary Clinton is like Maggie Thatcher isn't swiftboating, whether I agree with it or not. Any more than my perception that Maggie Thatcher was a direct descendant of Satan!

My concern was more about the fact that there have been other threads on this topic; and some people have interpreted a report in "The Times" (UK) about Hillary's campaign manager implying that she might be presented as America's Thatcher, as implying that she herself wants to model her policies on Thatcher. Firstly, the 'Times' is an unreliable right-wing rag these days. Secondly, I believe it also stated in the article that this didn't mean that Clinton's *policies* are like Thatcher's. Thirdly, she didn't say it herself. The way it came across is that the campaign manager would be presenting Clinton as an assertive woman leader who could win elections 'despite her gender' - just as Thatcher did. This does imply IMO either that the campaign manager is himself sexist ('all women leaders who can win elections, in spite of the terrible handicap of being female, are the same person'); or that he thinks that a significant proportion of American voters are. I dislike the implication, and it *may* reflect negatively on Clinton that she is prepared to employ this campaign manager - but it's making a HUGE leap to say that this means that she intends to follow all the policies of Satan, oops, I mean Maggie. And it does remind me a bit of right-wing attempts to accuse liberals of e.g. supporting communism or terrorism because they've been associated in some very indirect way with someone else who does.

Again, I was thinking of the Times article, and the way it's been interpreted here, when I used the term 'swiftboating' - not to your perception of similarities between Clinton's and Thatcher's foreign policies.

[chieftain]

62. Thanks for your reply.

I have been to England many times and have always been impressed with the civility I encountered there as well as in your post. Regards.

[LeftishBrit]

63. OT I know, but where in England did you visit?

[chieftain]

64. Mostly in London for business,

but also York, Windsor, Chertsey. I enjoyed every bit of my time.The people I met were always welcoming .Their graciousness helped make a traveler feel very much at home.

[HuffleClaw]

55. MEEEEEP... ...surely not.

wow.

[Dr Fate]

57. I hope that was fully focus-tested with ball-cap & teddy-bear sweater wearing Mid-Westerners.

Or at least from folks in a blue-state small town with & Applebees and a Starbucks.

After all, if those folks like it, it must be good enough for everyone!!!!

I say "Cheers" to the Southern, Midwestern and small-town focus groups who want an "Iron lady" for President!!!!

[zulchzulu]

61. Everybody knows Thatcher was Ronnie Raygun in drag

I love Photoshop.