Hillary commemorated the anniversary of the Bloody Sunday civil rights march in Selma, Alabama.
While Hillary Rodham Clinton came out second best to Barack Obama in their long-range oratorical duel at Selma, Ala., the real problem with her visit there a week ago concerned her March 4 speech’s claim of her attachment to Martin Luther King Jr. as a high school student in 1963. How, then, could she be a “Goldwater girl” in the next year’s presidential election?
The incompatibility of those two positions of 40 years ago was noted to me by Democratic old-timers who were shocked by Sen. Clinton’s temerity in pursuing her presidential candidacy. Barry Goldwater’s opposition to the 1964 voting rights bill was not incidental to his run for the White House but an integral element of conscious departure from Republican tradition that contributed to his disastrous performance.
Of course, no political candidate should have to explain inconsistencies of her high school days. What Hillary Clinton said at Selma is significant because it betrays her campaign’s panicky reaction to the unexpected rise of Sen. Obama as a serious competitor for the Democratic nomination.
The Clinton game plan for returning to the White House reflected tactics used in 2000 when she parachuted into New York to tie up campaign money, secure support from important Democrats and discourage potential opponents for the nomination. It seemed to be working on the national scene, discouraging longtime presidential aspirants. Former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana and former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack dropped out, and Democrats who dared to run were being snowed under by the Clinton tide.
Also, according to a reader of ours; Hillary took the passage in Galatians out of context when she quoted Galatians 6:9 in the closing part of her speech at First Baptist Church in Selma, Alabama:
“And we know — we know — we know, if we finish this march, what awaits us? St. Paul told us, in the letter to the Galatians, “Let us not grow weary in doing good, for in due seasons we shall reap, if we do not lose heart.”
What St. Paul actually said at the beginning of the paragraph in Galatians 6:7 is
“Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.”
Obama: