Yes, Maureen Dowd is mostly awful. Not always. This morning she shares our misgivings about Hill and she punches in all the right places.
If you're any kind of a language tracker, you'll know that the word "robust" is one of the more recent hand-me-down words from the White House. Anyone who uses it these days could be accused of being a kind of rhetorical disease emanating from the OVP. "A very robust diplomatic effort" is Cheney-talk for "send in the Predators." Let's face it: Hill's looking more and more like a Predator herself.
Then there's her actual vote like her actual vote to authorize the Iraq invasion. Bad habit.
In the original “sense of Senate on Iran” document, sponsored by Joe Lieberman and the Republican Jon Kyl last month, there was a paragraph that supported “the prudent and calibrated use of all instruments of United States national power in Iraq, including diplomatic, economic, intelligence and military instruments, in support of the policy with respect to” Iran. That original draft, called “tantamount to a declaration of war” and “Dick Cheney’s fondest pipe dream” by Senator Jim Webb of Virginia, was softened.
Even so, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd voted no, and Barack Obama would have voted no if he had voted.
If you know the dingbat vice president is agitating for a conflict with Iran, if you know that Condi is chasing after Cheney with a butterfly net on Iran and Syria, if you know you can’t believe anything this administration says, why vote to give them more backing on their dysfunctional Middle East policy?
Looks as though Hillary believes a woman candidate should try to look as tough and militaristic -- as "robust" -- as Dick Cheney. Does she really believe voters want another Dick-'n'-George presidency? Apparently. But, as Dowd says, "Voters seem more concerned with Hillary’s political expediency — which the vote underscored — than with her ability to be manly." Worst, it sends the message that she believes that to be more masculine and to condone aggression is smarter. In other words, even after eight years of immersion in the political messes of the Bush administration, she hasn't learned a damn thing.
