The World of Hillary Hatred

By Rich Lowry

It's a paradox of this election season that the most conservative candidate in the Democratic presidential field is the one most hated by conservatives. Hillary Clinton will not make extravagant promises about pulling American troops from Iraq, defends declaring elements of Iran's Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization and won't endorse massive new payroll taxes to fund Social Security. For this, she is attacked by rivals to her left, who are then cheered on by conservatives.

Welcome to the world of Hillary hatred, which will be a fixture of our politics for at least the next year if she wins the Democratic nomination. The animus against her is the latest round in a revenge cycle out of a classic Greek tragedy. First there was the conservative hatred of Clinton of the 1990s, avenged by the liberal Bush hatred of today, to be repaid in kind with four or eight years of rollicking Hillary hatred should she be elected President.

Liberal, Phony--Same Difference

With conservatives, she is caught in an inescapable trap of acrimony. The two things they most dislike about her are her liberalism and (what they consider) her phoniness. When she adopts a standard left-wing position, it is taken as confirmation of her plans to impose a Euro-socialism on America. When she takes a more moderate position, it is taken as confirmation that she is hiding her true plans behind dastardly artifice. Either way, she evokes conservative scorn.

Hillary has a history with the right. She didn't merely stand by her man during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. While "everyone else was crying and helpless" (as she put it to a friend), Hillary smote Bill's accusers with her famous "vast right-wing conspiracy" appearance on the Today show at the scandal's inception.

Her marriage is one of the chief conservative counts against her. Whereas her supporters see a messy union that Hillary has valiantly preserved under extreme provocation, conservatives see a corrupt bargain. She has certainly been as much enabler as victim of Bill's infidelities; her instinct has always been to attack any of his paramours who go public.

Her style of liberalism grates in a way that Bill's doesn't. His liberalism seems practical, in keeping with his "can't we all get along?" bonhomie. Hillary's liberalism has a more admonitory edge, in keeping with her buttoned-up demeanor. In her memoir, Living History, she writes that she was tasked in grade school with keeping the "incorrigible boys" in line, a role that seems entirely in character. Conservatives bristle at the sense of being told what to do, and they detect a tone of moral superiority in her advocacy of children's programs and health care. When she says, "It takes a village," they hear an implicit threat to have government impinge on their prerogatives as parents.

Stuck in the Middle

But Hillary hasn't exactly been a provocative liberal lately. Her primary campaign has been marked by her careful avoidance of any positions that would swing her too far left for the general election. Conservatives fasten on her caution and stiff demeanor as proof positive of her fakery and insincere maneuvering. Prior to her widely panned performance in Philadelphia, she met practically every verbal challenge at debates with a studied laugh, which might have softened her image but galled conservatives more than anything she could ever say.

One might expect at least a little grudging respect from conservatives for how Hillary has managed to hold the right flank, such as it is, in the Democratic field. And one might expect some grudging respect for her record since the 1990s as their hardened enemy combatant. Alas, it won't happen.

Conservatives might hate Hillary desperately--quite literally. They want to believe that her sheer unlikability will make up for all the Republican Party's weaknesses going into 2008, that the public is as vested in hating her as they are. They may despise Hillary Clinton, but it's on her that they now pin their hopes.