Hillary Clinton - Priceless!

I look forward to Hillary Clinton being the Democrat's Presidential nominee in 2008. She is going to provide more fodder for pundits and comedians than we've ever seen before. She makes Richard Nixon look warm, fuzzy, and honest. And she just can't resist her nature. All one will have to do to defeat Hillary is make commercials consisting entirely of her own statements. And please, don't take them out of context. They're not as funny that way. Here's the latest example reported by John Fund, courtesy of OpinionJournal.com's Political Diary:

"Swillary

Senator Hillary Clinton was on the warpath last week against school vouchers, warning an economic development conference in the Bronx that vouchers could encourage the creation of taxpayer-funded white supremacist schools -- or even a "School of the Jihad."

"First family that comes and says 'I want to send my daughter to St. Peter's Roman Catholic School' and you say 'Great, wonderful school, here's your voucher,'" Mrs. Clinton said. "Next parent that comes and says, 'I want to send my child to the school of the Church of the White Supremacist...' The parent says, 'The way that I read Genesis, Cain was marked, therefore I believe in white supremacy... You gave it to a Catholic parent, you gave it to a Jewish parent, under the Constitution, you can't discriminate against me.'"

The former First Lady went on to speculate about "what [happens] if the next parent comes and says, 'I want to send my child to the School of the Jihad?'" Declared Mrs. Clinton: "I won't stand for it."

This is absurdist demagoguery. Federal law prohibits the transfer of any funds to organizations that advocate hatred or violence against any group. Beyond that, federal Pell grants have long financed college students at many private and religious schools with little controversy. Last time anyone checked, none of the money had gone to colleges advocating white supremacy, though admittedly some schools do harbor some incredibly narrow-minded liberal faculty.

Senator Clinton is running for re-election this year and obviously feels the need to butter up her teacher union allies. But the depths to which she is willing to sink in attacking vouchers were distasteful and excessive even to some in her Bronx audience, two of whom called a local talk show afterwards to express their displeasure with the senator. One even dared to point out that Mrs. Clinton had sent her own daughter to an elite Washington private school, "but now she says we can only have choice if we have the kind of money she does.""

Not only that, the schools eligible for vouchers will have to be accredited locally. That means the curriculum must be approved. These vouchers aren't going to be used to send kids to Saudi-funded madrasses (don't even get me started on those). This isn't quite Hillary's "plantation" moment, but it's close.

And this might be appreciated by the teachers unions, but she already has their votes. The vast majority of the public who support vouchers are the poor, especially the black poor. A smart opponent could turn this back on Hillary rather quickly.