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Saturday, November 15, 2008
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I’ll be surprised if Barack Obama is standing at a podium soon introducing Hillary Clinton as his nominee for secretary of state. I don’t understand why Obama would seriously consider Clinton for that post, nor do I understand why Clinton would consider taking it.
It’s all very strange. The easiest explanation is that neither party is truly interested in seeing the deal go through, but is playing it for whatever advantage the process may offer them.
On the other hand, if Clinton is indeed offered and accepts the job, it would make quite a statement. By ceding her seat Clinton would also be ceding her independence, in effect acknowledging that the Era of Obama has begun and is likely to last a while.
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More on the challenge to the GOP
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The esteemed Charlie Cook, writing at the National Journal on the lessons of ‘08:
“We … learned that there are two Souths. There is a “New South,” which includes Virginia, North Carolina, and, to a lesser extent, Georgia. In this South, which has lots of suburbs, transplants, and younger college graduates, Obama and other Democrats won or ran well above the norm for their party. In the older South, which has more small-town and rural voters, fewer transplants, and a more downscale electorate, Obama actually performed worse than Kerry….
Republicans have lost an enormous amount of support among upscale voters, basically just breaking even among those with household incomes above $50,000 a year, a traditional GOP stronghold. Similarly, McCain’s losing to Obama among college graduates and voters who have attended some college underscores how much the GOP franchise is in trouble. My hunch is that the Republican Party’s focus on social, cultural, and religious issues — most notably, fights over embryonic-stem-cell research and Terri Schiavo — cost its candidates dearly among upscale voters.
The question now is whether Republicans will quickly learn from their mistakes — retooling and rebranding their party soon, putting themselves in a position to capitalize on the missteps of the Obama administration and the rest of the Democratic Party — or will languish, reduced to waiting for the Democrats to collapse and for GOP candidates to win simply because they aren’t Democrats.
Those who write off the 2008 election by saying that Republican candidates weren’t conservative enough are in denial. They are political ostriches, refusing to acknowledge that the country and the electorate are changing and that old recipes don’t work any more.”
That’s exactly right, Mr. Cook. And I see no sign that the GOP recognizes its problems and is ready to do what is necessary to fix them. They’d rather wait for Ronald Reagan to come back and save them, and as plans go, that one seems unlikely to pay off.
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