Yellow Pantsuit of Texas.
Hillary has somehow become big news lately in Texas politics. Texas GOP Gov. Rick Perry's campaign recently circulated a video that showed his potential 2006 primary foe, U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, speaking kindly of and even quickly embracing Sen. Clinton. The videotape, made by two men working for Perry's campaign, showed Hillary with Hutchison at a recent event at a museum devoted to women's history in Washington, and showed Clinton saying she is "delighted that Kay is my partner on so many fronts." Hutchison's spokesman tried to play off the video, saying that Perry was taking "silly political shots." However, the video may have hurt Hutchison more than her spokesman let on, as a couple of days later a 1993 letter to then-First Lady Clinton from Rick Perry mysteriously surfaced, in which Perry told Hillary, "I think your efforts in trying to reform the nation's health care system are most commendable." In response, a Perry spokesman said there is no comparison between Perry's writing a letter on behalf of his constituents in 1993 and Hutchison's accepting praise in person from "a rather liberal New York senator." In addition to intervening in Texas gubernatorial politics, Hillary last week held two fund-raisers in the Lone Star State, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for her 2006 re-election bid. NYC GOP & HRC
"Republican" New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently came out and implied that he would endorse Clinton for re-election next year. "I think that I've said as many times as I could both Sen. [Chuck] Schumer, the senior senator, and Hillary Clinton, the junior senator, have worked very hard and very effectively for New York City," he said. For example, Hillary just sent out a press release announcing $1.4 million in federal transportation funds for the city. But for the most part, pundits think this pseudo-endorsement is just Bloomberg's way of appealing to Democrats, who make up the vast majority of New York City's voting bloc. More Conservative Than Thou.
It may be remembered that a few years ago Hillary joined with Sen. Joe Lieberman (D.-Conn.) and conservative groups to bash Hollywood for having too much sex, drugs and violence in movies. Now Clinton is fighting against ultra-violent video games such as "Grand Theft Auto," in which players deal drugs, steal cars, frequent prostitutes and kill just about everybody they meet. Hillary said at a childcare symposium hosted by the Kaiser Family Foundation that "children are playing a game that encourages them to have sex with prostitutes and then murder them." She then used a bit of ebonics to say, "This is a silent epidemic of media desensitization that teaches kids it's OK to 'diss' people because they are a woman, they're a different color or they're from a different place." Hillary has joined with several Republican colleagues, including conservative Rick Santorum (Pa.) and Sam Brownback (Kan.) to launch a $90-million investigation of the impact of electronic media on children's "cognitive, social, emotional and physical development." Meanwhile, former Clinton adviser Dick Morris says that Hillary is merely following the script he had devised with her years ago, using polls undertaken for her which showed that women were perceived as better than men on issues involving children and education, while men led on foreign policy. Hillary is "using that stereotype to help her candidacy," says Morris, by pursuing family issues like violence in the media while becoming more "hawkish" on defense. First Ladies Club.
Former Presidents Bush 41 and Bill Clinton might be touring the world together and sharing sleeping quarters in tsunami-devastated countries, but the wives of these 1992 competitors aren't exactly chummy with each other. While speaking before students in California, former First Lady Barbara Bush, mother of the current President, predicted that Clinton will win the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination before losing to whoever is the Republican nominee. Hillary's office did not comment on the Bush matriarch's comments.
