Smith’s Bluff, IOWA — Just who is Hillary Clinton? That is the question that Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, freshly minted and newly announced, will have to answer for many Americans. Though she’s been virtually anonymous and heretofore rarely seen in the public eye, Mrs. Clinton has in fact done a few things in her lifetime, many Americans may be surprised to find out. She was an attorney early in her adult life, and she has been a United States Senator, Secretary of State and also can do a “mean mambo” according to anonymous Hillary staffers. At a recent campaign stop in Smith’s Bluff, Iowa, however, the former First Lady went to extraordinary lengths to define herself to the assembled crowd and to the members of the media covering her campagin.
Clinton, while seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination for the presidency next year, told reporters that she “understands America might not know” who she is because she has been “so adverse to attention and the limelight” while she “deliberately and privately decided whether or not [she] would run for president” but that now she is ready to “come out swinging” and “let everyone in America know who this Hillary Clinton person is.”
“Basically, in a nutshell, I’m the ‘Not a Republican’ that the country wants,” Hillary told the crowd. “My best trait is probably exactly that — I am not a Republican. I won’t put religious nutbars on the Supreme Court. I don’t think science only applies when arguing that life begins at erection. I don’t think my religion or yours entitles you or me to tell other people who they can or can’t love. I am not going to try and split hairs on the subject of what is or isn’t rape because it doesn’t matter to me — a women has a right to do with her body what she wants and it’s settled constitutional law. I won’t stand in the way of environmental policies that try to stave off climate change,” Mrs. Clinton told the crowd.
Former Secretary Clinton reminded the crowd that she has “already withstood the worst the Republicans could throw at [her]” while she was First Lady. “I had my name dragged through the mud because of my husband’s private sexual affairs. I can handle them being obstinate bullies to me,” said Clinton as she fired up her supporters. “I have heard you loud and clear America — you would vote for just about anyone to be your president over a Republican — and I am that just about anyone,” she said.
“Sure, you might ask yourself what exactly makes me – a center-left Democrat with huge ties to Wall Street and Corporate America different from a Republican in the long run,” Clinton conceded. “You may even ask yourself if my historically hawkish tendencies on foreign policy make me much different from classic Republican presidents like Ronnie Reagan,” Clinton continued. “And yes, my support for the Patriot Act and the War in Terror in general is worrisome if you’re truly a progressive liberal — but trust me, I’m not a Republican,” the former New York Senator assured the crowd, “at least I’m not that Republican.”
“Just like you elected Barack Obama and he turned out to be the fiercest, most staunchly liberal president of all time, so too can you expect me to behave in the same exact way,” Clinton pressed on. “Of course there are more progressive candidates out there, but none of them are predestined, anointed nominees like I am, are they,” asked Clinton rhetorically. “Let’s face it, there ain’t no modern day Teddy Roosevelt riding into town to thumb his or her nose at the corporatist forces that need a strong reminder that they are not elected and therefore have no official power over the people of this nation. So, guess what,” Clinton again asked the crowd rhetorically, “I’m the best shot you got. And we all know you do not want a Republican in the White House, so yeah…”
As she got ready to wrap up her speech, Clinton addressed another issue that many have had with the idea of her candidacy. “Some have said they worry my campaign sends a message that the United States has become dependent on an elite, ruling class of dynastic families that just pass the baton of power back and forth from generation to generation. I say to them, ‘Go ask John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Jack Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Ted Kennedy, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush how they feel about that subject.’ Because it makes no difference to me that if I win we’ll have had the same two families controlling the country for the better part of three decades. Isn’t that what Thomas Jefferson meant when he said, ‘Ah, fuck it, who cares anyway?’ The point is, at the end of it all,” Clinton told the crowd, “I am not a crazy-ass Republican.”
“I’m a vintage Republican.”
