One of These Is Just Like the Other, by Robert Gore

Kudos to Hillary Clinton; her email kerfuffle illustrates perfectly the contemptible state of American politics, governance, and the electorate. Start with Hillary herself: a woman of scant accomplishment who owes every position she has obtained to her husband’s influence and political skills. Search the record of her public utterances and writings, an exercise only a committed masochist could endure, and you won’t find a hint of originality or imagination. She craves control for control’s sakes, driven not by any vision, but rather by whatever meager and pathetic satisfactions can be extracted from the obsequience and adoration of fawning masses, media hacks, and bureaucrats, most of whom she despises.

None of this matters one whit to her supporters, who are glad she kept her emails safe from prying eyes. The Democratic party has become the answers to two questions: What’s the payoff? and: Will the government get more? People vote their meal ticket, and Mitt Romney’s 47 percent is now 49 or 50 percent who are beholden to the government. Hillary will keep the payola coming until the economy collapses, debt markets blanche, or producers go on strike. Consequences are those things that nobody thinks about because they’re never going to happen…until they happen.

Will the government get more? Hillary is a government lover’s dream. She’ll expand existing welfare state programs, and she’ll undoubtedly find some heretofore “neglected” American group that “needs” government assistance and can be brought into the fold of reliable Democratic voters. Someone in her retinue, suffering from delusions of cleverness, will label it “The Great New Society,” or the “The New Covenant Deal,” or the “New New Greatness,” or something similarly catchy, and Hillary will assume her place in the pantheon of Democrat greats devoted to what they call “redistributive justice,” and those who pay for it call “something for nothing.” Redistributive justice does indeed have to be paid for, so taxes will go up. And Hillary will place the firm and all-knowing hand of government on any remaining dark, unregulated corners of American life.

There is simply no way that someone of her gifts can or should be confined to the comparatively small stage of the United States of America. Following a long bipartisan tradition, she can be excepted to send US military and intelligence might anyplace she deems in need of our enlightened intervention. She has repeatedly endorsed such intervention, since her husband bombed Bosnia, Yugoslavia, and a Sudanese aspirin factory when he was Bombardier in Chief. She’ll be the Dronemeister in Chief, but don’t think she’ll limit herself to remote warfare. A “muscular” foreign policy is one in which the boots of muscular but hoodwinked young men and women are placed on the ground in faraway places to protect whatever the leaders consider US interests, while they stay back in Washington and make speeches praising duty, sacrifice, heroism, Clint Eastwood movies, and the NSA. Hillary will have no problem feeding American youth into bloody maws around the globe. Being female, it will be entirely appropriate if she lets dribble a tear or two at one of those Memorial Day or Veterans’ Day addresses from Arlington Cemetery.

After six years of tagging President Obama as a sissy, Hillary’s muscular foreign policy presents a problem for the Republicans. They march in lockstep—even Rand Paul has fallen into formation—to the drumbeat of foreign intervention. Itching for a war somewhere, anywhere, they have given Benjamin Netanyahu standing ovations, sent a letter to Iran, pressed for a convoluted plan to take out Isis and then Assad (see “They Said That? 3/12/15,” SLL, 3/12/15), and are looking for Vladimir Putin’s scalp. Regime change everywhere! Nothing gets the testosterone going quite like wartime propaganda, remote control drones, espionage, fast planes dropping big bombs, collateral damage, domestic surveillance, and sending someone else’s kids off to die. The problem: Hillary’s got just as big as testicles as the Republicans—just as much testosterone courses through her veins. She’ll call their chicken hawk bets and might even raise them an intervention or two.

That leaves the Republicans few fallbacks to attack her. They will promise lower taxes, less regulation, and less spending, their usual chestnuts. Unfortunately, the last Republican president blew their cover. While Obama ranks as the all time spendthrift and borrower, “W” is in second place. His predecessor, Hillary’s husband, had a much slower rate of discretionary spending growth and actually managed to run surpluses for four years. The government is $18 trillion in the hole and has over $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities, and the baby boomers are drawing on old age entitlements. Even with a Laffer curve-based advertising campaign, it’s hard to imagine tax cuts getting much traction. Keep in mind, too, that since tax-cutter W’s day, the tax-paying class has shrunk and the tax-receiving class has expanded.

Republicans will rail about Obamacare, but they always rail about Democratic programs…and then accept them. Both parties are batting 1000 when it comes to not eliminating programs. The same can be said for not eliminating regulations and for not opposing crony-capitalistic bailouts during the last financial crisis. How about less spending? The three biggest items in the federal budget are Social Security, Medicare, and military and defense. Old people are a Republican electoral redoubt, so absent a financial crisis forget Social Security or Medicare reform, and how are we going to have a “muscular” foreign policy if we cut defense?

Which gets us back to Hillary’s scandals. Both parties want the same things: your money, your freedom, and your life. The only difference, a purely cosmetic one (as the coming election will make abundantly clear), is rhetorical. So Republicans, having no issues to plausibly differentiate themselves, will be left with Hillary and her husband’s scandals. She will be left trying to dispel widespread doubts that she’s actually a human being, not a automaton control-bot programmed by a team of demented geniuses in a New World Order laboratory somewhere.

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