Sunset 11-13-16
A Shadow is Lifted
by KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON
November 11, 2016 4:00 AM @KEVINNR National Review
A few days ago, I asked a senior Republican elected official what he thought about Donald Trump’s election. He became rather . . . formal, his face draining a bit and his voice going cold: “He was not the nominee I wanted, but —” and there I cut him off: “But how about watching Hillary lose?” At that point, there was a shift in mood worthy of Olivier himself.
“Oh, that. That was . . . oh . . . that was good. Very good.” Big, goofy grin. “So good.”
I have been writing about the Clinton political-criminal syndicate since I was a teenager; now I am closer to the age of Social Security eligibility than I am to the age I was when the luckiest man in modern American politics was keeping a strategically low profile in Arkansas while the more accomplished men of the Democratic party, facing the ghastly pangs of George H. W. Bush’s purportedly inevitable reelection, dropped down one by one like the Ancient Mariner’s shipmates. Mario Cuomo, doing his “Hamlet on the Hudson” bit, dropped out at the last possible moment. Bill Bradley and Jay Rockefeller decided that they weren’t quite ready, and Dick Gephardt had no stomach for the fight. Clinton was left to deal with the likes of Paul Tsongas and Jerry Brown (yeah, that Jerry Brown: Moonbeam Immortal) and Bob Kerrey, who gave him a pretty good run of it for a hot minute.
It was Georgia where Clinton really, definitively took the lead. Millennials may not know this, but Clinton, and then Clinton-Gore, ran a campaign that today’s Democrats would denounce as “neo-Confederate.” Bill Clinton and Al Gore boasted of being the “Double Bubba” ticket, two relatively conservative white Southern men who were going to make the Democratic party once again safe for businessmen by purging the McGovernite pansies and Sister Souljah, who were going to bring some by-God law-and-order to our cities and, well, Make America Great Again.
Lots of Confederate flags and Redemption talk. Read more
November 11, 2016 4:00 AM @KEVINNR National Review
A few days ago, I asked a senior Republican elected official what he thought about Donald Trump’s election. He became rather . . . formal, his face draining a bit and his voice going cold: “He was not the nominee I wanted, but —” and there I cut him off: “But how about watching Hillary lose?” At that point, there was a shift in mood worthy of Olivier himself.
“Oh, that. That was . . . oh . . . that was good. Very good.” Big, goofy grin. “So good.”
I have been writing about the Clinton political-criminal syndicate since I was a teenager; now I am closer to the age of Social Security eligibility than I am to the age I was when the luckiest man in modern American politics was keeping a strategically low profile in Arkansas while the more accomplished men of the Democratic party, facing the ghastly pangs of George H. W. Bush’s purportedly inevitable reelection, dropped down one by one like the Ancient Mariner’s shipmates. Mario Cuomo, doing his “Hamlet on the Hudson” bit, dropped out at the last possible moment. Bill Bradley and Jay Rockefeller decided that they weren’t quite ready, and Dick Gephardt had no stomach for the fight. Clinton was left to deal with the likes of Paul Tsongas and Jerry Brown (yeah, that Jerry Brown: Moonbeam Immortal) and Bob Kerrey, who gave him a pretty good run of it for a hot minute.
It was Georgia where Clinton really, definitively took the lead. Millennials may not know this, but Clinton, and then Clinton-Gore, ran a campaign that today’s Democrats would denounce as “neo-Confederate.” Bill Clinton and Al Gore boasted of being the “Double Bubba” ticket, two relatively conservative white Southern men who were going to make the Democratic party once again safe for businessmen by purging the McGovernite pansies and Sister Souljah, who were going to bring some by-God law-and-order to our cities and, well, Make America Great Again.
Lots of Confederate flags and Redemption talk. Read more