Hillary Clinton is a polarizing political figure, and I have been admittedly on the side that typically finds her an annoying power-monger. That said, here’s where she stands:
On every issue, there are big differences but the biggest difference is the disregard for our constitutional democracy, the disdain for checks and balances, the denial of accountability that marks this president and vice president, and that’s really our entire system being put at risk. Maybe we can dig ourselves out of the hole on fiscal responsibility, energy and health care before it’s too late, but we cannot afford to have our Constitution shredded and our country’s commitment to freedom basically thrown out after centuries of setting the standard by which others are judged.
There are a lot of people, not just Democrats, who know we have to change direction in our country. I have so many Republicans coming to my events [who] say things like ‘I didn’t sign up for all this,’ and the ‘this’ would be a long list depending upon their particular concerns. They’re coming, because frankly, they’re patriots, and they don’t want this administration to continue leading us down into a blind hole like they are, undermining our future, failing to invest to make us safer and stronger and richer and smarter, more competitive, fairer for the future.
– Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
After McCain’s terrible capitulation to Bush on the issue of torture, I’m left with what for me is an amazing political turnaround: I’ll vote for Hillary before I’ll vote for McCain. I didn’t see that coming. But you can’t kow-tow to the right-wing and get my vote, and if McCain won’t stand up for this, I can’t trust him to stand up for anything. I respect a lot of the work he’s done, but the issues are too large now for that to be adequate.
The bottom line is that the Republican party of Eisenhower and Goldwater, reasonable men with a rational philosophy (whether you agreed with it or not), is dead. There is no issue—none—which the Republican Party of today is in touch the Republican Party of the 1950s or 1960s. Just list the issues: Federalism, fiscal responsibility, military spending, the environment, education, civil liberties, separation of church and state, etc.
One could make the point that the Democratic Party is not notably better, and in some instances that’s true. But they’re not demonstrably worse, and they didn’t just vote to shred the Constitution. Perhaps I’d urge a move to Libertarianism, the Greens, or some other third party if our system weren’t so entrenched as a two-party state. Right here, right now, however, the Republicans simply must be stopped, and voting Democratic is the only way to do that.