2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forum"The Hole in Hillary’s Flip-Flop Excuse"
She keeps saying new information makes her change her mind on policy. But what new information?
By Jack Shafer
"Hillary Clinton has a propensity to change her mind on big issues. She has reversed her positions on gay marriage, immigration, gun control, the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact, mass incarceration and the Iraq War, and some believe her recent stand on the Keystone XL pipeline constitutes a flip, too."
...snip
Everybody agrees that changing facts can justify a change in ones view. But Clintons insistence that learning about new or better information propels her reassessments prompts this question: What was the new information?
To my knowledge, no new information about gay marriage emerged from the day she endorsed civil unions for same-sex couples to the day she demanded the right to same-sex marriage. The immigration, gun control and mass-incarceration issues have been similarly unrippled by shocking new findings. Likewise, the information required to make a stand against the Iraq War was not hidden. Other senators found it and took that position! Perhaps the anti-war information escaped Clintons noticein which case, bad on heror perhaps she viewed it and decided not to act on itin which case, double-bad on her. And who among us had a better vantage from which to assemble an encyclopedic view on the Trans-Pacific Partnership than Clinton? She praised it endlessly while secretary of state, but pulled a moonshiners turn last week to skedaddle away from it.
...snip
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/10/democratic-debate-hillary-clinton-flip-flop-213247#ixzz3zyWDC2Ky
Broward
(1,976 posts)Xipe Totec
(43,890 posts)Faux pas
(14,690 posts)global1
(25,270 posts)djean111
(14,255 posts)Those would be the new information.
dsc
(52,166 posts)and more time doing real reporting, he might have noticed some of the following. Net immigration from Mexico has been zero or negative for nearly the entire Obama administration. Call me a flip flopper but I think that might make one change one's opinion of immigration and what to do with people who have come here illegally. As to gun control, there was this little event called Newtown, maybe the author was in Michigan with no internet service when that happened. Maybe he was still there when the literally dozens and dozens of other such massacres happened as well. What about Iraq? Well there is the small matter of the lack of weapons of mass destruction which literally no one argued in real time. Not Byrd, not Kennedy, not Kucinich, literally no argued the weapons weren't there. I, for one, consider that new info. For the record I don't think she did change her opinion on either gun control or immigration but again, there was new info if this reporter bothered to act like one.
berniepdx420
(1,784 posts)Clinton stunned everyone even Latino activists when she boldly called for a "path to full and equal citizenship" for all of the roughly 12 million illegal immigrants in the country. Speaking at a gathering of handpicked young immigrants in a high school in Nevada, a Latino-heavy swing state, she rejected the notion of a mere path to legalization like the sort Jeb Bush and some of the more immigrant-friendly Republicans have skittishly backed. "That's code for second-class status," Clinton declared. She promised to go much further than even President Obama's recent executive action and "defer" deportation proceedings not only against some illegal immigrants, but virtually all of them, while working toward comprehensive immigration reform that included citizenship.
This was a remarkable shift for someone who has not only maintained a studious silence for months about Obama's executive action, but also previously opposed drivers licenses for illegal immigrants. Indeed, her flip is so dramatic that instead of raising questions about her credibility, it has changed the conversation so much that we're immediately asking what Republicans need to do to catch up.
No doubt her proposal, which she offered no realistic plan for pushing through an unfriendly Congress, is designed to deflect attention from "Emailgate" and any number of other scandals that might yet derail her candidacy. But that's not all its aimed at doing.
by Shikha Dalmia http://theweek.com/articles/556421/hillary-clinton-already-crushed-republicans-immigration
Guns..
As you probably already know, secretary Clinton campaigned for president once before in 2008. Naturally throughout Secretary Clintons campaign against then Senator Obama the topic of gun control came up. In a debate leading up to the Nevada caucus, Hillary Clinton stated her 180 on creating a national gun registry by saying I don't want the federal government preempting states and cities like New York that have very specific problems."
Before declaring her presidential candidacy, Clinton advocated a federal firearm registry.
quote 1
Throughout the campaign she discussed her relationship with guns growing up and how guns were a part of American culture, learning how to shoot, and how hunting and shooting were a way of life in America. In a 2008 debate on the eve of the Philadelphia primary Clinton was asked about the DC handgun ban. She invoked local and state law in opposition of federal legislation We have one set of rules in NYC and a totally different set of rules in the rest of the state. What might work in NYC is certainly not going to work in Montana. So, for the federal government to be having any kind of blanket rules that theyre going to try to impose, I think doesnt make sense.
To summarize her thoughts on the issue, Secretary Clinton stated "I respect the 2nd Amendment. I respect the rights of lawful gun owners to own guns, to use their guns. But I also believe that most lawful gun owners whom I have spoken with for many years across our country also want to be sure that we keep those guns out of the wrong hands. And as president, I will work to try to bridge this divide, which I think has been polarizing and, frankly, doesnt reflect the common sense of the American people. quote 2 & 3
by By JDSSeattle http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/10/04/1427635/-Hillary-Clinton-s-2008-position-on-gun-control-wasn-t-what-it-is-now
Iraq War vote....
Despite a partial dissent from the State Departments intelligence arm, the unclassified NIE declared that the intelligence community possessed high confidence that Iraq is continuing, and in some areas expanding, its chemical, biological, nuclear and missile programs. Its hard to know exactly what was in the longer, classified version, since even when the Bush administration released it in 2004, it whited out 78 of its 92 pages. But it went into more detail about the objections raised by the State Department, and especially the Department of Energy, to claims that Hussein had a nuclear-weapons program. According to Senator Jay Rockefeller, the NIE changed so dramatically from its classified to its unclassified form and broke all in one direction, toward a more dangerous scenario.
Senators Bob Graham and Patrick Leahy would later say that reading the classified version helped convince them to vote no. And during a lunch two days before Clintons speech, according to Gerth and Van Natta Jr., Graham forcefully urged his Democratic Senate colleagues to read it.
by PETER BEINART http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/whats-missing-from-hillary-clintons-iraq-war-apology/372427/