HILLARYPALOOZA

I've had a change of heart on the issue of the right's persistent hope that somehow, someway, Hillary Clinton would enter the 2004 presidential race. (go here, here, and here)

The newest installment of this is that Clinton (or "Hitlery Klintoon", as often referred to by the Freepers and their ilk), is breathlessly linked by Drudge, as "ready for Iowa".

Nevermind that it's just a fundraiser in Des Moines at which Hillary will be speaking, not to mention the fact that every time a camera has been within 50 feet of her in the past several months, she's made a point that she absolutely won't run in 2004.

I spent a while being really annoyed by this continuing Hillary obsession on the right, even from relatively level-headed conservatives like George Will (notice I said "relatively"), and not just the "Hitlery Klintoon's death squads" types. My new stance is this: let 'em obsess! To borrow a line from Tom Petty: "Well Yeah I might have chased a couple of Clintons around / All it ever got me was down" Going after Bill and Hillary, despite the right's claims about how unpopular they are, has never boded well for them.

Furthermore, this all seems like a lot of misappropriated energy on the right's part. The conventional wisdom seems to be that candidates like Gephardt, Dean, Kerry etc, are annoyed the the Hillary rumor (a creation from thin air by the right) is diverting attention from them. If I were Dean or the others, I'd welcome all the Hillary speculation; it gives conservatives a rather significant decoy target, so the candidates can go on the offensive and sort out their issues without the right's guns fully trained on them.