Saturday, January 21, 2006
Hillary and mullah money
Pathetic. If taking on the mullahs is truly your conviction, you shouldn’t be taking money from them. Though skeptical, I had started to get a better image of her on the international stage because of her very in-your-face support of the democratic revolutions sweeping the world this past year. But this seems to prove what we already knew in the first place: it’s all for show.
Well, I'm all for transparency in campaign finance and applaud Mr. Mayer for his sharp reporting (h/t larwyn), but I'm not sure this undermines her case that she's a hawk on Iran. Has Robert forgotten California Democrat Jesse Unruh's one claim to immortality?
"If you can't drink a lobbyist's whiskey, take his money, sleep with his women and still vote against him in the morning, you don't belong in politics."
Damn straight. Is there any doubt that the Clintons subscribe to the Unruh Principle (and I don't want to hear any cracks about the "sleep with women" part)?
Hillary is going to raise money from anybody that she can raise it from (with the possible exception of Jack Abramoff or his clients). People will give her money because they hope that she will go their way, not that she has promised to do so. The same is true for most careful politicians.
Hillary may or may not be on my side in foreign policy, but since I think that at the moment she faces shorter odds of rising to the presidency than any other Democrat, and perhaps any other person, I'm for keeping hope alive.
6 Comments:
By 
, at
Sat Jan 21, 01:15:00 PM:
It's not so much that she just took the money from them -- it's likely that just about every single Congressman has. The difference is that she gave a speech advocating things that are diametrically opposed to what she is saying now, such as the loosening of visa restrictions on Iranian nationals. If we recall the 2004 presidential race, that's not being a hawk, that's being a flip flopper. Where exactly does she stand?
By 
Lanky_Bastard, at
Sat Jan 21, 01:22:00 PM:
Clinton lost my vote when she co-sponsored the flag-burning ammendment. (I have no desire to burn a flag, but it really irks me that there should be any rights available in 3rd-world shitholes that we don't have here.)
I don't think there is anything she wouldn't sell out for personal gain. Maybe Unruh would be proud? In my mind, she and DeLay aren't so different. Effective politicians and masters of working the system. I question what such people sell for their power, and what will they do with it once they have it. I don't see them as good representatives of the people.
By TigerHawk, at
Sat Jan 21, 01:57:00 PM:
Fair enough, Robert, but I'm not even sure that loosening visa restrictions on Iranian nationals is diametrically opposed to squeezing Iran. Iran is suffering from a brain drain, and making it easier for educated Iranians to leave would increase the economic pressure on that country (although it might weaken the internal political pressure on the regime). During the Cold War, for example, nobody thought there was anything inconsistent about pressuring the Soviet Union and promoting emigration from the Soviet Union. It was Scoop Jackson's big contribution.
By , at
Sat Jan 21, 02:41:00 PM:
Hill is only following in John Kerry's footsteps - may
they led to same outcome!
John Kerry's Iranian campaign contributor Hassan Nemazee tried to silence the SMCCDI, a pro-democracy Iranian student group.
Snips from GatewayPundit yesterday:
John Kerry Campaigned to Supply Mullahs with Nuclear Fuel
This is very scary...
"I believe we could have done better. I think the United States should have offered the opportunity to provide the nuclear fuel (to Iran), test them, see whether or not they were actually looking for it for peaceful purposes."
Senator John Kerry
September 30, 2004
First Presidential Debate of 2004
RTWT - and thank God!
Click here: Gateway Pundit: John Kerry Campaigned to Supply Mullahs with Nuclear Fuel
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2006/01/john-kerry-campaigned-to-supply.html
By , at
Sat Jan 21, 02:47:00 PM:
I'm a really big fan of the Jackson-Vanik agreement, as you point out, the mass emigration from the USSR revealed the extent of its illegitimacy.
But the decrease of internal pressure on the regime would probably be quite large. The regime has been able to survive with stagnation and skyrocketed unemployment, so loosened visa restrictions would allow those pissed off students and intellectuals to leave the hands in a greater population of fanatics. I think the whole reason we haven't seen a democratic counter-revolution yet is because we haven't told them enough that "It's your country, take it back," while providing them with sufficient support.
So I'm not so sure how much minor economic squeezes can do. Even the brain drain effect might not be so great. My experience has been that most Iranian students who are allowed to leave to go to top-quality Stateside universities, say Harvard, are having their education paid for by the regime, must return to the country afterward, and must report on people and events they encounter that are anti-regime. Also, while the Iranians that live in LA are vehemently anti-regime, those around the rest of the country generally want to maintain ties and continue to visit, so they don't speak out. I think it's a bit akin to Mexico because so many of their poor and disgruntled come over here that the political pressure to force good governance in their own country never formulates. As much as I feel sorry for them and want to see them leading good lives, I think they need to be the ones to take action.
By , at
Mon Jan 23, 04:55:00 PM:
Well, I think Big Daddy had something to do with state civil rights act, too, but I wouldn't argue against that quote being his greatest claim to fame (and I appreciate your naming it the "Unruh Principle" -- we Unruhs could do worse for a motto). Marilee
