Kathleen Sebelius: My Guilty Reasoning
I've been advocating Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius for VP for a while now.
Part of the reasoning behind Sebelius is that she is well-qualified. She has served in elected office for 22 years. She served in the Kansas House of Representatives for 8 years. She then stood up to Blue-Cross Blue-Shield as Kansas Insurance Commissioner by blocking their attempts to buy up insurance carriers in Kansas. She served in that capacity for 8 years. As governor she eliminated a $1.1 billion debt without raising taxes.
Now I must admit the more nefarious and, to my mind, less idealistic reason why I favor Sebelius. It boils down to: I don't like Hillary Clinton.
Hillary is a power unto herself, that is undeniable. She represented roughly half the party. She also, in my opinion, has the remarkable ability to make her most diehard supporters just ignore her constant dishonesty and the constant racial references she, her husband, and her associates kept throwing around(hint: start with Bill Shaheen and "Is Obama A Drug Dealer?" and it's a long long timeline of covert race-baiting that culminated in the overt race-baiting of Geraldine Ferraro). She has the ability to have her top surrogate, Mark Penn, deem half of this nation as "insignificant" day-after-day memo after memo to the point of parody, and then pivot to comparing the self-inflicted Michigan and Florida debacles to Selma, Seneca Falls, and Zimbabwe. Her top surrogates bashed and insulted every state she didn't win, calling Iowa nothing but a mayor's race, implying that South Carolina was insignificant because the black guy always wins South Carolina, suing to stop the at-large precincts in Nevada. And can we all agree that whatever the independent merits of both Florida and Michigan's cases, the Clinton position was highly disingenuous and hypocritical given that they agreed with the original position of the RBC(I think they were given a gift, myself).
There were moments during the primary where I agreed with Peggy Noonan when she likened Hillary to "a political Rasputin", a miserable creature that haunts the Earth with its malice, refusing through bulletwounds and multiple glasses of cyanide and blows to the head with a baseball bat and attempted cremation to JUST FRICKIN DIE. (read about the bizarre death of Rasputin on wikipedia) I truly cannot stand Hillary Clinton. These past three months, all I've wanted was for her to just go away. After having Clinton put us all through this crap, she should be nowhere near the ticket. But to me, that is not enough. As long as Clinton holds an independent power base in the Democratic Party, she will always have the ability to undermine Obama.
Therefore, Barack Obama must destroy Hillary Clinton.
No, not personally. Senator Clinton will continue to serve in her capacities. Rather, she must be destroyed in the realm of presidential politics. The ground beneath her must be rendered inert so that she has no independent power-base to run on again. Barack Obama must finish the political coup he has started by wrenching away Clinton's base of support and rendering her irrelevant. He must make Hillary Clinton a has-been.
I think you can now see that this is a major reason why I'm a fan of Sebelius. I see nominating her as not merely a shot-across-the-bow but a wholesale power-play that over time will solidify Obama's power in the party and dissipate the Clintons'. I suspect a faction of Clinton support will be outraged and resist this nomination. I also suspect that, as with Obama's nomination, these holdouts will eventually be over-powered and overruled, and they will be forced to submit to the new reality that Kathleen Sebelius, not Hillary Clinton, will be the first woman elected to the White House.
Pretty crazy, I know, but bear with me.
What we are witnessing is a bloodless political coup. The first stage of this coup was Obama winning the nomination and gaining enough influence to force the Clinton camp to concede the race. The second stage in this political coup was consolidating the DNC into Obama's Chicago operations, making Obama's facilities the center of gravity in the Democratic Party. The third stage is what I am proposing: Put Sebelius on the ticket and consolidate Hillary's base under the Obama banner.
Question: Does wanting this to happen make me evil?
Part of the reasoning behind Sebelius is that she is well-qualified. She has served in elected office for 22 years. She served in the Kansas House of Representatives for 8 years. She then stood up to Blue-Cross Blue-Shield as Kansas Insurance Commissioner by blocking their attempts to buy up insurance carriers in Kansas. She served in that capacity for 8 years. As governor she eliminated a $1.1 billion debt without raising taxes.
Now I must admit the more nefarious and, to my mind, less idealistic reason why I favor Sebelius. It boils down to: I don't like Hillary Clinton.
Hillary is a power unto herself, that is undeniable. She represented roughly half the party. She also, in my opinion, has the remarkable ability to make her most diehard supporters just ignore her constant dishonesty and the constant racial references she, her husband, and her associates kept throwing around(hint: start with Bill Shaheen and "Is Obama A Drug Dealer?" and it's a long long timeline of covert race-baiting that culminated in the overt race-baiting of Geraldine Ferraro). She has the ability to have her top surrogate, Mark Penn, deem half of this nation as "insignificant" day-after-day memo after memo to the point of parody, and then pivot to comparing the self-inflicted Michigan and Florida debacles to Selma, Seneca Falls, and Zimbabwe. Her top surrogates bashed and insulted every state she didn't win, calling Iowa nothing but a mayor's race, implying that South Carolina was insignificant because the black guy always wins South Carolina, suing to stop the at-large precincts in Nevada. And can we all agree that whatever the independent merits of both Florida and Michigan's cases, the Clinton position was highly disingenuous and hypocritical given that they agreed with the original position of the RBC(I think they were given a gift, myself).
There were moments during the primary where I agreed with Peggy Noonan when she likened Hillary to "a political Rasputin", a miserable creature that haunts the Earth with its malice, refusing through bulletwounds and multiple glasses of cyanide and blows to the head with a baseball bat and attempted cremation to JUST FRICKIN DIE. (read about the bizarre death of Rasputin on wikipedia) I truly cannot stand Hillary Clinton. These past three months, all I've wanted was for her to just go away. After having Clinton put us all through this crap, she should be nowhere near the ticket. But to me, that is not enough. As long as Clinton holds an independent power base in the Democratic Party, she will always have the ability to undermine Obama.
Therefore, Barack Obama must destroy Hillary Clinton.
No, not personally. Senator Clinton will continue to serve in her capacities. Rather, she must be destroyed in the realm of presidential politics. The ground beneath her must be rendered inert so that she has no independent power-base to run on again. Barack Obama must finish the political coup he has started by wrenching away Clinton's base of support and rendering her irrelevant. He must make Hillary Clinton a has-been.
I think you can now see that this is a major reason why I'm a fan of Sebelius. I see nominating her as not merely a shot-across-the-bow but a wholesale power-play that over time will solidify Obama's power in the party and dissipate the Clintons'. I suspect a faction of Clinton support will be outraged and resist this nomination. I also suspect that, as with Obama's nomination, these holdouts will eventually be over-powered and overruled, and they will be forced to submit to the new reality that Kathleen Sebelius, not Hillary Clinton, will be the first woman elected to the White House.
Pretty crazy, I know, but bear with me.
What we are witnessing is a bloodless political coup. The first stage of this coup was Obama winning the nomination and gaining enough influence to force the Clinton camp to concede the race. The second stage in this political coup was consolidating the DNC into Obama's Chicago operations, making Obama's facilities the center of gravity in the Democratic Party. The third stage is what I am proposing: Put Sebelius on the ticket and consolidate Hillary's base under the Obama banner.
Question: Does wanting this to happen make me evil?
