Saint Hillary, Spawn of Satan

Jed Babbin's got the smartest take yet on Hillary Clinton, the American Janus:

Hillary Clinton is neither the anti-Christ nor the smartest politician around. We know, from pretty much everything she has done in her adult life that she is dishonest, opportunistic, and someone we cannot possibly trust with the security of our nation. Forget all that for the moment. Focus on the fact that she, like Howard Dean, John Kerry and Dennis Kucinich, is a pure-as-Ivory-Soap liberal.

Unlike the Deanocrat party leadership, Clinton is smart enough to realize that undiluted hyper-liberalism isn't a platform that will support any successful presidential candidacy. Clinton has, at least since her college days, been a near-radical liberal. (Any who doubt this should read Peggy Noonan's The Case Against Hillary Clinton.) But having lived with Lil' Billy for so long, and having helped create his post-Vietnam "New Democrat" persona, she knows how to conceal her liberalism under a cloak of phony moderation. Ever since 9-11, liberal Clinton has been wrapping herself in a political chrysalis. From it, with the aid of prominent Republicans who should know better, has now emerged the moderate Clinton butterfly.

There is a growing gap between Democrat voters and those who fund the Democrats' campaigns, and their problem is being exacerbated weekly by Howard Dean. When he says something such as the Republican Party is the Christian White People's Party, the Democrats' hyperlib base is energized. But all that energy short-circuits their donor base. The Dems' party activists want to push their party farther off into the lefties' parallel universe while the money men keep their checkbooks closed, hoping against hope that an electable moderate will suddenly appear. They are, quite literally, banking on Hillary to fill that bill.

Hillary's got all of Bill's ambition, but very few of his political skills. She'll certainly have his handlers, but Bill Clinton succeeded largely because of Bill Clinton, not James Carville, Paul Begala, Sid Blumenthal, or the rest of the hangers-on. Will Bill help Hill? That's the million-dollar question.