By Rick Manning
They ordered flags.
They ordered USA signs, and they trained attendees to chant USA when Bernie’s folks sought to disrupt.
They even made the backdrop behind Hillary Clinton look like a flag, rather than the drab steel grey resembling some futuristic Orwellian political stage that beset most of the Democratic Convention speakers. And yes, she even mentioned God, but I don’t remember Jesus making it past the speechwriters. She managed to talk about the Founding Fathers without the sneer that has become the norm from the left, and she re-cast them as supporters of collective liberty, rather than protectors of individual rights.
Hillary gave a speech reflecting the advantage of having the second convention, as she adjusted her remarks to answer her challenger. The main two problems facing the Democrats after the words have ended is that Hillary Clinton is delivering their message and they have had eight years in control of the White House where the problems festered or were created to explain away.
All in all, it was a well written speech that created a Swiss cheese history of Clinton’s life as well as the state of the nation over the past eight years. A speech and a candidate depending on the ignorance of voters who only tune into politics once every four years.
If an alien landed on this planet with no knowledge of Hillary Clinton’s history, that moon man might think that Hillary sure has some big ideas. Unfortunately for the Democrats, Hillary Clinton has a history. A historically corrupt politician, who put U.S. national security at risk with a private email server, who has been dogged by ethics problems since her days as the wife of Arkansas’ Attorney General and then Governor when she hit the jackpot in a rigged cattle futures scheme.
Hillary Clinton can talk about free college education for the middle class, but this is the same woman who raked in $2 million to deliver speeches on college campuses over the past few years — speeches that tuition and student activity fees underwrote. Now, she wants those who chose to go into debt to pay for college to believe that she feels their pain.
Clinton would love for people to listen to her words about having the judgment and character to be the Commander in Chief, yet it was that same Clinton who led a foreign policy which destabilized Libya, Iraq, Syria, Egypt and much of the Middle East. And yes, it was Hillary Clinton who failed to issue a timely State Department approval to allow U.S. forces to respond to the attack on our Benghazi Consulate costing four brave men their lives.
She has travelled the world as Secretary of State, but the world is a much more dangerous place for her trouble, as her accomplishments were few, and U.S. failures in the region created the space for the rise of ISIS — all associated with a sharp rise in Islamist terrorism both here and abroad. We’re in more danger than ever.
While President Obama famously discounted any concerns about Russia in a 2012 debate with GOP nominee Mitt Romney, Hillary’s Russian reset failed miserably. But she and her husband, President Bill Clinton did benefit as he netted a $500,000 payment for a one hour speech in Russia, and shortly thereafter, Hillary, as Secretary of State, signed off on a Russian takeover of one-fifth of all uranium production in the United States.
And the beat goes on. Hillary claimed concern about bad trade deals, even as one of her closest confidantes, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe publicly assured all of her Wall Street friends that once the election is over, Clinton will support the Trans-Pacific Partnership. After all, Wall Street has a huge investment in the Clintons with CNN reporting that, “Bill and Hillary reported at least $7.7 million for at least 39 speeches to big banks, including Goldman Sachs and UBS, with Hillary Clinton, the Democratic 2016 front-runner, collecting at least $1.8 million for at least eight speeches to big banks.”
The Democratic nominee talked about creating jobs and rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure with language eerily familiar to those who remember President Obama’s $800 billion failed economic stimulus plan that was supposed to provide “shovel-ready jobs” but instead was largely spent to keep public employee union members from getting the ax. Rather than needed reforms, state and local governments used the stimulus to keep unsustainable contracts and pension agreements which are bedeviling many today.
She talked about creating jobs while promising to increase the cost of doing business in the United States through higher corporate taxes, increased regulatory strangleholds and the resulting increased costs of the electricity needed to run manufacturing plants. There is a truism that you tax what you don’t want and you give breaks to what you want. Hillary’s promise to pay for all of her big ideas by significantly increasing business taxes will drive jobs overseas faster than any flawed trade agreement ever could, but she is hoping that no one will realize that inconvenient truth.
And then Hillary promised that she would tackle gun control, but never mentioned the words Islamic or jihad as being at the heart of most Americans angst about the uptick in violent crime. It is almost daily reports of beheadings, rapes and attacks by illegal aliens and Islamic jihadists which has America questioning whose side Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are on, yet those concerns were virtually dismissed as bigotry.
She spoke about unity, while the Administration she hopes to extend for another four years has been the most divisive in half a century with race riots in cities like Ferguson and Baltimore. Hillary wants to continue an Administration that has engaged in a wholesale assault on virtually every aspect of society from suing to force local school districts to allow biological males to shower in the girls high school locker room to rezoning neighborhoods based upon Washington, D.C. census maps. She wants to continue to force Christian bakers to participate in gay weddings, while moving to shut down free speech and rewriting the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Hillary Clinton’s speech wasn’t about unity, it was about consolidating and expanding usurped federal government power. And perhaps most ironically, she reminded everyone that one person as President has limited powers in chiding her opponent, while having remained silent as President Obama has used his pen and phone to run roughshod over any semblance of Congressional Constitutional prerogatives.
No matter how many pop artists they surround her with, Hillary Clinton is ultimately hoping that people will forget who she is and that she owns the wrong track they believe our nation is on, and elect her because she is a woman.
And with all the pomp that is what the Hillary Clinton campaign comes down to, elect me because no other woman has ever been elected before. A fine argument for a candidate for high school student body president, but a really dangerous one for someone who has proven herself unworthy of being trusted when four men are under fire in a far away land.
The author is president of Americans for Limited Government.
