The Clintons Got Tired Of Him, Too

As The GOP's Poison Pill Goes Down

Rep. Darrell Issa, defending his move against women's reproductive rights, compares the members of his all-male panel to Martin Luther King, Jr....Romney shows guts and stands up for women (the candidate's late mother, that is)...Dick Morris claimed on Monday that ABC's George Stephanopoulos, his fellow former Clintonite, was paid to float the contraception issue at a recent GOP debate. "They want to create the impression that the Republicans will ban contraception, which is totally insane," he said. This was right before we learned that Rick Santorum, possibly the GOP frontrunner, wants to ban contraception.

Gee, 20

Dick Morris and Eileen McGann write that the U.S. gave away some of its economic sovereignty at the recent G-20 summit:

[T]he world's most successful economy, ours -- which is the only one that has produced reliable economic growth for three decades and has lifted real personal incomes almost every year -- is going to subject itself to the burden of justifying its own economic policies in front of a global community of 20 nations, some of which do not even embrace free-market economies in the first place.

Indeed, it is only through access to our markets that nations have been able to escape poverty. Japan, Germany, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, China and India have sequentially trod this path into prosperity.

Obviously, we live in a global economy. But the United States is 24 percent of it. We are entitled to more than one-twentieth of a voice, and it is the world that should be following our policies -- not the other way around.

Obama's Enemies Guest List

Elaborating on points he made last Monday at the Nixon Library, Dick Morris, writing with Eileen McGann, outlines the risks the PE runs by giving top jobs to past and perhaps future opponents.

Prophet Of The Center

"I think Hillary Clinton could be a very good Secretary of State," political commentator Dick Morris told a crowd of 800 gathered in the White House East Room of the Nixon Library Monday evening. "In fact she'll be a great co-President." The strategist behind the march to the political center that resulted in Bill Clinton's 1996 reelection triumph, Morris (now a Republican) makes no secret of his disdain for the Clintons during frequent appearances on Fox News. Yet he described President-elect Obama's preference for hiring experienced Clinton-era figures -- and indeed hiring Clintons themselves -- as an expression of the young leader's insecurity. Since he's not entirely sure what he should do, Morris said, Obama "is appointing people to tell him what to do." His biggest laugh came when he said that a majority of Obama's Cabinet probably voted against him.

Morris doesn't share the prevailing optimism about Obama's moderate leanings. "It no longer matters whether he will govern from the center or the left, because the left has become the center," he said. He predicted that the various Bush-Obama stimulus schemes will fail and that the GOP will come roaring back in the 2010 midterm elections.

As for foreign policy, he said that Secretary of State Clinton will be tough and shrewd, understanding that permitting crises to develop would interfere with her ambition to achieve the Presidency. Her main job: Keeping more or less out of the news. "Foreign policy only matters when it goes wrong," he said. "When it goes right, no one pays any attention." He called on the audience to think about the Presidential candidate who had almost singlehandedly engineered and promoted a policy for turning the Iraq war from a winning into a losing proposition. That's right: John McCain.

Schemes Of Rivals

Dick Morris (coming to the Nixon Library next week) and Eileen McGann are appalled by the idea of Sen. Clinton at State:

Hillary will be a loose cannon as Secretary of State, vindicating her own agenda rather than that of the president and burnishing her own image at every turn. Not since Cordell Hull in the 30s have we had a Secretary so interested in running for president. Not since William Jennings Bryan in the 1910s have we had a defeated nominee named as Secretary. Obama will not be able to control Hillary nor will he be able to control his own administration with Emanuel as Chief of Staff. He will find that his appointees will march to the beat of their own drummer - if he is lucky - and Hillary's if he is not.

In other words, Morris and McGann believe, Hillary Clinton would be the new Salmon Chase.