Why Hillary Clinton Should Thank God for Donald Trump by Nick Gillespie

Editor in Chief at Reason, Nick Gillespie, just penned a very important and very timely piece over at the Daily Beast, titled: Why Hillary Clinton Should Thank God for Donald Trump. I completely agree with his analysis, which is that Trump’s rise benefits Hillary Clinton more than anyone else. While everyone is focused on Trump’s buffoonery, the likely next President of these United States is being given a huge pass. You can almost hear the internal mental dialogue of millions of Bernie Sanders supporters out there. It goes something like this:

“Hillary really is an untrustworthy, corrupt, authoritarian crony, but imagine Trump in the White House. I’ll have to hold my nose and vote Hillary.”

Indeed, there’s probably no person out there who could galvanize more disenfranchised, apathetic voters to unenthusiastically vote for Hillary, and that’s a very bad thing.

What follows are some excerpts from Nick’s article:

Forget the fake facts, the Mexicans-are-rapists racism, the stupefying ignorance of international trade, and the unambiguous and unapologetic anti-Muslim bigotry. Forget even the fact that he’s just a gold-plated Billy Mays who has pitched every goddamned crap product from frozen steaks to a failed namesake university to mattresses.

Perhaps the very worst thing about Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy is that it’s keeping us all—Republicans, Democrats, and independents alike—from examining just what a god-awful and terrible president Hillary Clinton will be. Less than a year out from the 2016 election, that’s the horror we all need to be confronting.

Clinton isn’t just cruising to the Democratic nomination—she’s far and away the most likely winner in next year’s general race.

Let’s forget for the moment the bizarre but disturbing character flaws such as Clinton’s unwillingness to acknowledge that she used a ghostwriter while writing best-sellers and weekly newspaper columns that were published everywhere for years but read by exactly nobody. Or her lying about being shot at in Bosnia. Or her WTF bringing up Bobby Kennedy’s assasination while discussing scenarios where she could beat Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic primary. We all have bad days, after all, and who hasn’t embroidered a little bit about who we were named after, how broke we were after leaving the White House, and whether our daughter was jogging near the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001?

The crazy thing about this list is that it goes on and on and on seemingly forever, with the most recent example being her claim that she is owned by Wall Street due to 9/11.

Instead, let’s turn to her record and her proposals. When it comes to economic policy, Clinton manages to disappoint everyone. For libertarians and progressives alike, her embrace as a senator from New York of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the auto bailouts, ethanol subsidies, and her self-professed role of representing Wall Street are enough to poison the well. Progs and even most liberals still take umbrage at votes that made it harder to discharge credit card debt during bankruptcy and her constant efforts to soften the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), while free-market types are appalled by her openly political flip-flopping on free-trade agreements and her proposal to slap an “exit tax” on U.S. companies that try to pay less in taxes.

And don’t mistake her ability to frustrate everyone with hard-headed centrism. When it comes to the economy, she’s just a hot mess. The through-line for her economic thinking isn’t ideology per se, it’s maintaining and increasing the ability to bestow gifts and presents to her favored friends and punish those she finds offensive. Little wonder, then, that one of her bold new plans for the economy is dropping $250 billion on infrastructure and creating a federal “infrastructure bank” (because shovel-ready projects worked so well the last time, right?). She hasn’t bothered to say where the money to pay for these projects will come from, but that’s because the important thing is where the money is going.

Clinton has even more explaining to do when it comes to foreign policy. As a senator in the early Aughts, she was a super-hawk, who even, as author Doug Henwood notes, “accused Saddam of having ties to Al Qaeda—essentially siding with Bush and Cheney to a degree that no other Democrat, even Joe Lieberman, approached…After the war went sour, Hillary argued that the Bush administration hadn’t pursued diplomatic approaches fervently enough—even though she voted against an amendment that would have required the president to do just that before any invasion.”

Then there’s Libya, of course. Not Benghazi, though that was a clusterfuck, to be sure. By her own account, as Secretary of State, she was the leading voice in the Obama administration for U.S. intervention in Libya and after Moammar Qaddafi was deposed, she laughed while crowing, “We came, we saw, he died.”

In case you missed these the first time around, definitely check out:

The Forgotten War – Understanding the Incredible Debacle Left Behind by NATO in Libya

Tunisian Terror Attack Suspects Trained in U.S. “Liberated” Libya

For all that, it may be her truly awful record on civil liberties, broadly defined, that is most unsettling. In the wake of the San Bernardino shooting, she joined the chorus of Democrats seeking to use the government’s “no-fly” list to limit gun purchases. The problem is that, as the ACLU will tell you, that list is a shining example of how the war on terror has eviscerated basic due process for citizens. Nobody knows quite how you get on the list (despite a record number of people being on it) and nobody knows how you get off it, either.

Yep, as was covered here earlier this week. See: How Obama is Using the Grossly Unconstitutional “No Fly List” to Push Gun Control

Clinton also doesn’t regret voting for The Patriot Act, which is at least consistent with her lack of interest in due process concerns.

And when it comes to free speech, she hasn’t even gotten that far. Whether it’s scapegoating YouTube videos for attacks on U.S. consulates or saying that we need to change the Constitution to limit what she considers “unaccountable” political speech, Clinton is positively censorious.

In fact, even before Donald Trump promised to talk to Bill Gates about “closing that internet up” to screw ISIS, Clinton had beat him to the punch. A longtime proponent of forcing tech companies to provide “backdoors” through which law enforcement can access encrypted communications, Clinton believes that Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites need to do the government’s bidding in blocking and monitoring communications that might be used for terrorist recruitment. In a literal and figurative moment of handwaving, Clinton actually told an audience at the Brookings Institution this week, “You’re going to hear all of the usual complaints, you know, freedom of speech, et cetera.” It really can’t turn out well to have a president who essentially yadda-yaddas away free speech.

It’s true that Donald Trump has been a uniquely stupid and reprehensible candidate. But a candidate despised by so much of the electorate can’t possibly win. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, can, and probably will, so for the love of god, can we not forget about her unique brand of awfulness as we all bash The Donald?

Indeed. As usual, the Presidential race is pure theater for the plebs with no real Constitutional choices allowed on the ballot. No matter who ends up in the White House, “we the people” will lose once again.

For related articles, see:

Donald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton on Freedom of Speech – A Side By Side Comparison

Here Come the Cronies – Buffett and Blackstone President Launch $33,400 a Plate Hillary Clinton Fundraiser

Ex-Goldman Banker Who Profited from Housing Crash and Subsequent Bailout Donates $100k to Hillary SuperPAC

New Poll Shows 60% of Americans Think Hillary Clinton is Untrustworthy and Dishonest

The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale for Hillary Improves

COMPROMISED – How Two of Hillary Clinton’s Top Aides Received Golden Parachutes from Wall Street

How UBS Sent Millions to the Clintons After Hillary Saved the Mega Bank While Secretary of State

In Liberty,
Michael Krieger

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