Shameless Pandering

New York Magazine has an interesting story that conjectures that Hillary's shameless pandering to voters on the gasoline tax holiday may have been part of her undoing in Indiana. Hillary has consistently demonstrated that she will say and do anything to further her megalomaniac quest for power. It is one reason I cannot stand her - one needs to have some basic level of principle in my view besides "it's all about me" and "I want this, so I should have it." Perhaps even less sophisticated voters who are not daily news and political junkies saw through Hillary this time. I again have to wonder what precisely Hillary has gotten from her vastly expensive consultants - other than bad advice. Here are some story highlights:

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It’s easy to see why Clinton was tempted to hop aboard the Pander Express, once John McCain floated the idea of suspending the federal gas tax of 18.4 cents a gallon for the summer. Giving some badly needed relief to truckers, farmers, and vacationers fit right in with the hash-slinger-in-a–Wal Mart–pantsuit image Hillary honed in Ohio, perfected in Pennsylvania, and was deploying all over Indiana. And when Obama derided the idea by saying it would only save consumers “pennies,” he seemed to be handing the Clintons one more opportunity to portray him as an out-of-touch elitist.

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But as things turned out, when Hillary called for suspending the gas tax, she threw Obama the kind of rope he desperately had been seeking to pull himself out of the Wright train wreck. Wright screwed Obama as hard as any noncandidate has ever screwed an American presidential contender. And even after counterattacking and distancing himself from his former pastor, Obama was noticeably off his game. But the gas tax became a rare instance where Clinton and Obama directly and diametrically opposed each other on a policy issue, automatically generating headlines and coverage that helped push Wright out of the local news in Indiana.

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Further, the gas tax turned the national media against Hillary over the weekend, because the Clinton campaign hadn’t bothered to line up (or just couldn’t find) a single expert to support suspending the tax. That left Clinton herself and surrogates like Senator Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) insulting economists on national television, which looked ridiculous. It also left the media free to report the story without trying to be evenhanded and essentially to tell viewers that suspending the tax is a stupid idea.

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Most importantly, the new debate let Obama rediscover his voice. . . . And he took full advantage. Six days ago, Obama introduced the single most brilliant ad of the Indiana campaign, called “Truth.” And, palpably relieved at the partial change of subject, he incorporated a detailed denunciation of the gas-tax suspension into his stump speech, in which he hit full stride again on Monday night.