Can a college research paper really be the Rosetta Stone to deciphering a candidate's politics or character?
That is the question raised in this
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17388372/page/2/ MSNBC article about Hillary Clinton senior Wellesley thesis on Chicago community organizer and controversial figure
Saul Alinksy.The MSBNC article states that, when Hillary was first lady, the Clintons demanded and received Wellesley's compliance in sequestering Hillary's thesis. All Wellesley gradauates' senior papers are normally available for public viewing. But, for a time at least, Hillary's was not - at the Clintons' order. The MSNBC reporter found out that the thesis can now, however, be viewed if you want to put in the time and effort to go to Wellesley and read it.
The revealing information uncovered by the MSNBC article gives an insight into Hillary's character and tactics, and seems to explain why the Clintons would want the thesis to remain hidden.
The confident young student took her thesis title — “There Is Only the Fight...” — from T.S. Eliot:
...
Rodham opened the thesis by casting Alinsky as he cast himself, in a “peculiarly American” tradition of democrats, from Thomas Paine through Martin Luther King. “Democracy is still a radical idea,” she wrote, “in a world where we often confuse images with realities, words with actions.”
This, I think, should be highlighted as indicative of Hillary's Rovian understanding of how to manipulate public perceptions:
“in a world where we often confuse images with realities, words with actions". If there was any doubt left, Hillary knows
exactly what she is doing when she raises the spectre of Selma and women's suffrage. It is her deliberate purpose to try to tie Barack to the negative images people have of those events, trying to use her words to taint him with wrongful actions.
Hillary's ugly and dishonest shell game.
More from the
MSNBC article. Alinsky is a key figure in the political history of both Hillary and Barack:
Her options after graduation were attending law school at Harvard or Yale, traveling to India on a Fulbright scholarship, or taking the job with Alinsky's new training institute, which would have allowed her to live in Park Ridge with her parents, Hugh and Dorothy Rodham, and commute into Chicago..
“His offer of a place in the new institute was tempting,” she wrote in the end notes to the thesis, “but after spending a year trying to make sense out of his inconsistency, I need three years of legal rigor.” She enrolled at Yale that fall, a year ahead of a charming Rhodes Scholar from Arkansas.
...
A decade later, another political science major started out on the path that Hillary Rodham had rejected, going to work for a group in the Alinsky mold. That was Barack Obama, now a U.S. senator from Illinois and her leading opponent for the Democratic nomination. After attending Columbia University, he worked as an organizer on the South Side of Chicago for the Developing Communities Project. Obama and others of the post-Alinsky generation described their work in the 1990 book “After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois,” in which Obama wrote that he longed for ways to close the gap between community organizing and national politics.
While she seemed to take away only negatives from Alinsky's teachings, Barack used what he learned as a positive tool for change. Additional evidence, if we needed any, that HIllary is old-school, while Barack represents the politics and political conscience of the future.
Perhaps the most important point from the MSNBC article:
Turning to an expert at using Alinsky's tactic -- picking a target, freezing it, personalizing it and polarizing it -- Chris Lacivita can also envision such an ad.
Lacivita co-produced the "Swift Boat" ads in the 2004 presidential race questioning Democratic Sen. John Kerry’s Vietnam service. He told MSNBC.com that no fact from a candidate's life is too old for negative advertising.
"I think the last election cycle proved that there's no statute of limitations," said the Republican political consultant. "What someone did or said 35 years ago is certainly fair game, especially if you're running for president of the United States.
Picking a target.
Freezing it.
Personalizing it.
Polarizing it.
Swiftboating.
This is exactly what Hillary is doing to Barack. She is slandering him, in a calculated, manipulative way, with the intention of deceiving the voters. Barack Obama is a sexist. Barack Obama is an elitist. Barack Obama is trying to suppress the vote.
More examples here.Hillary is a student of Alinsky. She knew him well when she wrote her thesis about him. You better believe that what she is doing now is a deliberate strategy that she learned from him.
My question for Hillary - why in the hell did you save these tactics for a fellow Democrat,
instead of using them against George Bush?I want no part of a Hillary Clinton presidency. By this campaign, she has shown that there is
no limit to how low she will go to get what she wants. No outrageous lie she will not tell. No moral compass of personal integrity or rules of decency and fair play that guides her. She has lost all perspective. It's all about Hillary.
From an article by Christopher Hayes in
The Nation: political identities were formed in the crucible of crisis, from the Gingrich insurgency to the Ken Starr inquisition. The overriding imperative was survival against massive odds, often with a hostile public, press or both. Like an animal caught in a trap that chews off its leg to wriggle away, the Clinton crew by the end of its tenure had hardly any limbs left to propel an agenda. The benefit of this experience, much touted by the Clintons, is that they know how to fight and how to survive. But the cost has been high: those who lived through those years are habituated to playing defense and fighting rear-guard actions. We know how progressives fared under Clintonism: they were the bloodied limbs left in the trap.
Hillary Clinton.
There is only the fight. This is
not the mentality of a person who belongs in the White House.
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