The WaPo’s Eugene Robinson nails it with this one:
What Clinton’s evocation of RFK suggests isn’t that she had some tactical reason for speaking the unspeakable but that she and her closest advisers can’t stop running and rerunning through their minds the most far-fetched scenarios, no matter how absurd or even obscene. She gives the impression of having spent long nights convincing herself that the stars really might still align for her — that something can still happen to make the Democratic Party realize how foolish it has been.
Clinton campaigns as if she knows she will leave some Democrats with bad feelings. That’s the Clinton way: Ask forgiveness, not permission. But every day, as more superdelegates trickle to Obama’s side, it becomes a surer bet that she will not win. She and her family enjoy good health and fabulous wealth. They’ll be fine — unless, while losing this race for the nomination, Hillary Clinton also loses her soul.
That sort of assumes that she has a soul, though, doesn’t it ?
Robinson is right in one sense. The RFK gaffe shouldn’t be taken as some signal of a secret hope on Hillary’s part that Barack Obama will get shot, but as an indication of just how desperate she’s becoming as the increasing absurdity of the idea that she has any chance at all of getting the Democratic nomination becomes more and more evident by the day.
But that’s only half the story, I think.
The gaffe itself, and the entire manner in which this campaign has been run ever since Iowa is an indication of that it really is that motivates Hillary Clinton in this race. She’s not running because she has new ideas. She’s not running for reasons of public service. She’s running simply because she wants to be President and likes the idea of having power again.
That’s more dangerous than anything I can think of.
May 28th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Having burned her bridges behind her within the AA community in New York, Hillary Clinton blames Barack Obama over her RFK remark. Coming weeks after Teddy Kennedy’s endorsement of Mr. Obama, and only days after Mr. Kennedy’s disturbing medical diagnosis, Hillary says her unfortunate utterance was taken out of context. Hillary was quick to made hay on Mr. Obama’s “bitter” comment. Now hoisted on her own petard, mowed down by her own ambition, Hillary looks like a woman who can’t take what she dishes-out. Besides, wouldn’t yet another Kennedy (JFK Jr.) have been a shoe-in for her senate seat? Before the Clinton’s launched their political fugue, an end-run around the 22-Amendment, both of them knew there was a fatal flaw – as should you. Again, the mere mention of a Hillary Clinton nomination should send paroxysms of moral indignation up and down the nation’s collective spine: http://theseedsof9-11.com