The Obama Muslim Shell Game: Catholic School Docs Show Obama Registered As Muslim

The Obama Muslim Shell Game: Catholic School Docs Show Obama Registered As Muslim

To: News Assignment Desk

Media Contact:
Bill Wilson at bill@dailyjot.com

2007-01-30 — [WDC News Post] — WASH—Jan 25—DJNS—Associated Press has revealed that Senator Barack Hussein Obama, Democratic candidate for President of the United States, attend a Catholic school in Indonesia registered as a Muslim, further clouding the issue of where Obama was schooled in Indonesia and when. Obama, by his own admission in books that he has written, has said that he attended a Catholic school and a Muslim school while living in Indonesia with his atheist mother and Muslim stepfather. But now that Fox News reported that Obama may have been indoctrinated in Islamic teachings while attending the Muslim school in Indonesia , he and his handlers have gone spinning the story to the news media, and their stories do not match up.

Obama is claiming that the allegations by Fox are “scurrilous” and that he believes people “recognize that the notion that me going to school in Indonesia for two years at a public school there at the age of 7 and 8 is probably not going to be endangering in some way the people of America.” Associated Press is reporting that the Muslim school Obama attended is a public school, open to people of all faiths—this according to the spokesman for Indonesia’s Ministry of Religious affairs who goes only by the name of “Sutopo.” Records show that Obama attended a Catholic school first and then the Muslim school. When he was ten years old, he moved to Hawaii and attended a private secular school.

There are many holes in Obama’s story. First, if he attended the Muslim school when he was seven and eight, which school did he attend when he was nine and ten, if he first attended the Catholic school? There appears to be a gap in his education or a miscommunication about what school he attended and when he attended it. Associated Press reports that Obama’s mother relocated to Indonesia from 1967-71 after marrying Obama’s Muslim step-father—who Obama claims was no longer Muslim, but an atheist. The Catholic school, Fransiskus Assisis, where Obama first attended school, enrollment documents, however, show Obama enrolled as a Muslim, the religion of his stepfather.

Obama’s spokesman Robert Gibbs says he isn’t sure why the Catholic school document had Obama listed as a Muslim. Gibbs told AP, “Senator Obama has never been a Muslim.” While the spokesman is denying that Obama was never a Muslim, Obama, himself, has not publicly said he was never and is not now a Muslim.

What can Americans expect of a Muslim-educated Obama? AP writes of its interviews at the Muslim school in Indonesia, “Those tied to the school say they are proud to have had a student like Obama, and hope that, if he is elected president, his ties to Indonesia will broaden his world perspective and his views on religion.” Indonesia is home to some of the most radical Islamic schools in the world. And Obama’s identity is yet to be revealed as the confusing doubletalk hides the real Barack Hussein Obama, Democratic candidate for President of the United States .

“And they will deceive every one his neighbor, and will not speak the truth: they have taught their tongue to speak lies, and weary themselves to commit iniquity.”– Jeremiah 9:5

The AP’s non-correction correction

http://michellemalkin.com/archives/006801.htm

Introducing the Terrorism Awareness Project

Introducing the Terrorism Awareness Project
By FrontPage Magazine
FrontPageMagazine.com | January 31, 2007

The
David
Horowitz
Freedom
Center has launched the Terrorism Awareness Project to combat the complacency and ignorance about the intentions of the radical Islamists who declared a holy war on the
United States and the West on September 11, 2001.

 

 If one thing was clear in the aftermath of the attack, it was this: the terrorists would be back.  But the alarms 9/11 set off were soon muted by complacency and self doubt.   After overthrowing the Taliban, the U.S. soon returned to the illusion of peace and security and confusion of purpose that had marked the Clinton era, when the Jihad first began to strike against our
America.  Because of the campaign by the “anti-war” movement, our populace as a whole is ignorant of the threat, doesn’t know the enemy, and is unaware of their true intent, capabilities and resolve.  This is especially true of college students who face a daily barrage of anti-war and anti-American propaganda.  The Terrorism Awareness Project is designed to make them aware of the threat of jihad and the struggle that lies ahead if this nation is to survive its assault. 

 

            The

Freedom
Center designed the Terrorism Awareness Project to put informative materials about the war on terror into the hands of millions of college students. The Project will identify campus coordinators at
U.S. universities and colleges who want to make terrorism a priority at their schools. It will drop flash videos like The Islamic Mein Kampf  www.terrorismawareness.org/islamic-mein-kampf) directly into students’ and faculty members’ email boxes.  It is placing a series of ads beginning with “What Americans Need to Know About Jihad” (Genesio link) in all the leading college newspapers.  It has prepared three pamphlets–The Nazi Roots of Palestinian Nationalism;  The Islamic Mein Kampf, and What Every American Needs To Know About Jihad—which will be distributed throughout the university community.  All three can be downloaded from the TAP website (www.terrorismawareness.org.)

 

          The focal point for this campus campaign will be Terrorism Awareness Month.  The Project’s campus coordinators including  will distribute  Terrorism Awareness Guide which will provide a brief history of the jihad and a bibliography of crucial books on the objectives of radical Islam.  There will be well publicized screenings of “Obsession” (a documentary on the Islamists’ jihad recently featured on Fox News) and similar programs followed by panel discussions of experts on radical Islam such as Robert Spencer, Steven Emerson and Daniel Pipes.  In addition to these public events, TAP chapter members will evaluate the Islamic or Mideast Studies departments of their campuses, analyze the bias of the reading materials and classroom discussions, and ask to present competing ideas in class. They will conduct an organized public relations campaign with their campus newspapers, including opeds and letters to the editor.            

Propaganda at its best

‘Judgment!’ Exposes Fraudulent Death Camp Pictures that Fooled the World!

[to order the film ‘Judgment!’ from Emporer’s Clothes]

In August 1992, millions of people were shocked to see photographs of a supposed Bosnian Serb death camp.

You may recall those pictures. Taken by the British news station, ITN, they focused on Fikret Alic, the emaciated-looking man on the left. The mass media broadcast these pictures as supposed proof that Alic and the other Muslim men in the pictures were imprisoned behind barbed wire in a Serbian death camp.

The pictures were broadcast worldwide. Twenty minutes after they were shown on US Television, President George Bush Sr. held a press conference to announce harsh new US measures against the Serbs.

But the death camp story was a lie. The ITN crew had filmed from inside a fenced-in storage area. By shooting through the fence (composed of chicken wire with strands of barbed wire on top) ITN created footage that gave the impression that the Bosnian men were imprisoned. With a little editing, this footage was turned into pictures that gave the impression of a death camp.

By fortunate coincidence, a Serbian TV crew accompanied ITN that day, filming the same things that ITN filmed and sometimes filming the ITN crew. Using footage shot by the Serbs, ‘Judgment!’ proves that the people in the famous ITN pictures were refugees. Curious to see a film crew (not to mention one that had set up shop inside a tumble-down storage area) the refugees wandered over, leaned on the scraggly fence, chatted and joked with the ITN reporters. ‘Judgment!’ shows, step by step, how ITN took this innocent footage and edited it to create the phony death camp pictures.

The “death camp” pictures were used to demonize the Serbian people as “new Nazis” and justify devastating economic sanctions and NATO military intervention, including bombing the civilian population, in Yugoslavia.

Get a copy of ‘Judgment!’ If after viewing the film you don’t think we proved our case, return the film and we will refund your money.

If we are wrong, you lose nothing. But if we are telling the truth – and we are – then the media has created fictional news to justify the destruction of multiethnic Yugoslavia.

‘Judgment!’ is based on footage edited by Mihajlo and Petar Ilic of Ilke Productions, who have graciously permitted Emperor’s Clothes to use their work to produce this film for an English-speaking audience.

New Telephone Greeting. send it on

New Telephone Greeting.

Wouldn’t it be pretty amazing, if this caught on, all over the country…?

“GOOD MORNING, WELCOME TO THE UNITED STATES”

“Press “1” if you speak English.” “Press ‘2’ to disconnect until you can .

The Democrats Want To Lose In Iraq For Purely Political Reasons

The Democrats Want To Lose In Iraq For Purely Political Reasons

The pro-surrender Democrats are bound and determined to give-in to Al-Qaeda before the surge has a chance to work:

“Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee began laying the constitutional groundwork today for an effort to block President Bush’s plan to send more troops to Iraq and place new limits on the conduct of the war there, perhaps forcing a withdrawal of American forces from Iraq….Senator Russell Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat who acted as chairman for the hearing, said he would soon introduce a resolution that would go much further. It would end all financing for the deployment of American military forces in Iraq after six months, other than a limited number working on counterterrorism operations or training the Iraqi army and police. In effect, it would call for all other American forces to be withdrawn by the six-month deadline.

…Mr. Feingold insisted that his resolution would “not hurt our troops in any way” because they would all continue to be paid, supplied, equipped and trained as usual — just not in Iraq.

The panel heard from legal experts, who cited constitutional debates over conflicts ranging from the “quasi-war” with Napoleon in 1798 to peacekeeping missions in Bosnia and Somalia in recent years. No war seemed to hang more heavily over the hearing than Vietnam, where Congress brought American involvement to a close by cutting off financing.

Prof. Robert Turner of the University of Virginia suggested that Congress had made itself responsible for the deaths of the 1.7 million Cambodians estimated to have been slaughtered by the Khmer Rouge, by denying funds for President Nixon to wage war inside Cambodia. Similarly, he said Congress bore responsibility for the deaths of 241 marines killed by a suicide bomber in Lebanon in 1983 because it raised the question of forcing a withdrawal there.”

The surge hasn’t even started yet and we’re already seeing results in Iraq. Al-Qaeda is fleeing Baghdad, Al-Sadr’s militia is standing down, the Iraqi government is standing up, and we’re knocking the Iranians around. Plus, when we have clearcut performance benchmarks in Iraq, like having the Iraqis take over the day to day security of every province by the end of November, that will allow us to see if we’re succeeding or failing by the end of year. So, what’s not to like once you get beyond the mindless pessimism?

Here’s the honest truth: the primary motivator for the Democrats right now is politics, pure and simple, not our national security.

The war is unpopular and their base is demanding that we give up, but it goes much deeper than that. You see, at this point, the Democrats have calculated that it’s in their political interest to fail in Iraq and therefore, they want to lose the war.

After all, they’ve successfully managed to portray this as “Bush’s war,” and if they cut off funds and everything falls apart, well, they’re confident that they can blame that on Bush. But, on the other hand, if the surge succeeds, then Bush will get a boost from it and the popularity of the war will climb. That would put them in an incredibly tough spot in 2008 because their base will demand that we capitulate to the terrorists whether we’re winning or losing, and the rest of the American public won’t go along with knuckling under in an effort that seems to be succeeding.

On the other hand, if we lose, it would be a huge hit for the left’s most hated foe, George Bush, it’ll humiliate the military, which most liberals feel nothing but contempt for despite their protestations to their contrary, and they’ll be able to spend years walking around, saying, “See? You can’t win the war on terror with military means. We have to use law enforcement measures instead!”

To liberals, these petty concerns are more important than America winning a war that is vitally important to our national security.

Resisting Global Warming Panic

By J.R. Dunn

It may well turn out that George W. Bush’s greatest service to the country won’t involve terrorism or Iraq at all, but his steadfast refusal to be buffaloed into joining the panicky consensus on global warming.
Rumor had it that Bush intended to embrace the warming thesis at last in his State of the  Union address. Instead Greens nationwide went into depressed tailspins as he called for an attack on the problem by means of technical advances, a curve ball very much in the old Bush mode, of a type that we’ve seen too little of recently. Bush is acting in defiance of much of the civilized world, led by a former vice-president and including the media, the entertainment community, the Democrats, most of the policy elite, that peculiar and never-before-encountered group known as “mainstream scientists”, and now even corporations, eager to clamber aboard the Kyoto wagon while there’s still room.
 
As James Lewis recently put it on these pages, global warming is most likely a crock. Some of us are old enough to  remember similar hysterics over air pollution, overpopulation, and universal famine, none of which ever came to pass. The science behind warming is so full of lacunae, speculation, and outright fraud (e.g., the famed “hockey stick chart” purporting to show temperature levels over the past millennium while conveniently dropping both the medieval warm period and the Little Ice Age) to be in any way convincing.
One curious element involves certain facts that, on first consideration, would appear to be crucial but never seem to come up in debate. I have spent several years trying to track down the actual values of two numbers – the annual amount of  carbon dioxide emitted by all human activities, and the amount of carbon dioxide already present in the atmosphere. There are as many answers as there are sources, the first ranging from 3 billion to 28 billion tons, the second from 750 billion tons to 2.97 x 10¹² tons, a number so large that there’s no common English word for it. Variations of this size – up to three orders of magnitude – suggest a serious lack of basic knowledge. The fact that it never comes up suggests that scientists   are well aware of this. (It’s doubtful we’ll see the question addressed in this week’s IPCC report either.)   
So it’s something of a relief to turn to history. Despite the insistence of Al Gore and  friends, this is far from the first time the Earth has ever passed through a climatic warming period.  In fact, one occurred relatively recently, the medieval warm period, more commonly known as the Little Climatic Optimum (LCO), a period stretching roughly from the 10th to the 13th centuries, in which the average temperature was anything from 1 to 3 degrees centigrade higher than it is today. Several years ago, I covered the LCO in an article detailing the climatic history of the last millennium. But it’s worthwhile to cover the highlights once more, to help put the contemporary panic into perspective.

* How warm was it during the LCO? Areas in the Midlands and Scotland that cannot grow crops  today were regularly farmed. England was known for its wine exports.    
* The average height of Britons around A.D. 1000 was close to six feet, thanks to good nutrition.  The small stature of the British lower classes (and the Irish) later in the millennium is an artifact of lower temperatures. People of the 20th century were the first Europeans in centuries to grow to  their “true” stature – and most had to grow up in the USA to do it.
* In fact, famine – and its partner, plague — appears to have taken a hike for several centuries. We   have records of only a handful of famines during the LCO, and few mass outbreaks of disease. The bubonic plague itself appears to have retreated to its heartland of Central Asia.   
* The LCO was the first age of transatlantic exploration. When not slaughtering their neighbors,  the Vikings were charting new lands across the North Atlantic, one of the stormiest seas on earth  (only the Southern Ocean – the Roaring 40s – is worse). If you tried the same thing today, traveling their routes in open boats of the size they used, you would drown. They discovered  Iceland, and Greenland, and a new world even beyond, where they found grape vines, the same as   in England.    
* The Agricultural Revolution is not widely known except among historians. Mild temperatures eased land clearing and lengthened growing seasons. More certain harvests encouraged experimentation among farmers involving field rotation, novel implements, and new crops such as legumes. While the thought of peas and beans may not thrill the foodies among us, they expanded  an almost unbelievably bland ancient diet as well as providing new sources of nutrition. The result was a near-tripling of European population from 27 million at the end of the 7th century to 70  million in 1300.
* The First Industrial Revolution is not widely known even among historians. Opening the  northern German plains allowed access to easily mined iron deposits in the Ruhr and the Saarland.   As a result smithies and mills became common sights throughout Europe. Then came the basic inventions without which nothing more complex can be made – the compound crank, the connecting rod, the flywheel, followed by the turbine, the compass, the mechanical clock, and eyeglasses. Our entire technical civilization, all the way down to Al Gore’s hydrogenmobile, has its roots in the LCO.

But in the late 13th century, it all came to an end.
The climate closed down. Rains ruined crops and washed away entire seacoast towns. Far to the north, the great colonies of Iceland and Greenland faltered and began to fade away. Famine returned to Europe, and with it the plague, in one of the greatest mass deaths ever witnessed by humanity. The bright centuries were replaced by the dance of death and a dank and morbid religiosity. The focus of culture shifted to the warm Mediterranean. It remained cold, within certain broad limits, for six hundred years. The chill only lifted in the 1850s, when our current warming actually began.
We look back to a world that was a far more pleasant place at the turn of the last   millennium, with a milder climate, plentiful food, a healthy populace. A picture, needless to say, at some variance with the Greens’ prediction of coming universal disaster. It also undermines one of one of the basic environmentalist tenets – that nature is in delicate balance that can destroyed by a hard look from any given capitalist, and that any such change leads inevitably to catastrophe.   
The LCO suggests that a warmer world may well be more desirable than the one we have now. To go a step further, my research implied that the planet is in fact meant to be somewhat warmer than it is today, that the life-forms we see around us are in fact adapted to a warmer climate. The earth is, after all, stuck within a three-million-year glacial epoch whose origin and cause remain a mystery. (We’re now in a brief “interglacial” – a warming period! – that began only 12,000 years ago and could end tomorrow.)   
I brought this up with a friend, a noted NASA scientist — who, due to the tenor of the   times, shall remain nameless – and he responded, ‘Of course – there’s more life at the equator than at the poles.” (This, by the way, is a perfect example of how a capable scientific mind operates, an immediate, undistracted focusing on the most critical elements. It doesn’t seem to work that way with the Greens’ “mainstream scientists”.)
If warming were currently the case, we’d more than likely be seeing an LCO situation   unfolding – meliorating weather, fewer storms, and moderating temperatures. But instead we’re enduring massive blizzards across the Midwest, single-degree temperatures in Central Park, cold currents embracing Australia (bringing with them a plague of great white sharks), and killer storms across Europe. Not at all what we’d expect from either the medieval or the environmental scenario. Whatever is happening to the climate, it appears that the scientists, mainstream and otherwise, have not yet put their finger on it.    
Which is why we need to keep our options open, harboring our resources rather than   blowing them on some wild-eyed Gore plan that may end up doing the exact opposite of what is required. And why GWB deserves a lot more credit than he’s ever likely to get. 

War and Presidential Popularity

By Frederick J. Chiaventone

Whatever one might think of President Bush’s much touted popularity numbers – or perhaps one should say unpopularity numbers – in the polls, the historical convergence of conflict and Presidential approval ratings is almost universally dismal.
Our contemporary collective memories most readily recall the lackluster approval ratings of the Presidents involved in Vietnam.  Johnson and later Nixon took severe hits in popularity as the war in Southeast Asia dragged on seemingly without end and at horrendous cost to American families. Lyndon Johnson was so disheartened that he opted not to run for re-election and Nixon worked as quickly as possible to bring to a close this very unpopular conflict.  Their predecessor John F. Kennedy seems largely to have escaped the wrath of the pollsters but it is easy to forget that the US involvement in Vietnam, initiated in his Presidency, was still in its infancy at the time of his death.
Several years before Kennedy’s Administration, Harry Truman found himself embroiled in the first of many post-World War II conflicts as the United States struggled to rescue South Korea from an unprovoked assault by hordes of North Korean and later Chinese troops.  A confused, nasty slugfest resulted that cost over 54,00 American lives by the time an uneasy cease-fire was signed in Panmunjon. By then, Truman’s approval rating had slipped to 22% (lower even than President Bush’s most recent polling figures) and his hopes for re-election had ended with his defeat in the New Hampshire primary.
Truman’s predecessor in the White House, the inimitable Franklin Roosevelt, alone among what could be termed War Presidents, seems to have avoided the excoriation of a disenchanted press and public. Despite his election to the Presidency for an unprecedented four terms, and despite America’s twin trials of the Great Depression and World War II, Roosevelt seems to have escaped the harsher judgments of the opinion pollsters (perhaps owing to the fact that the Gallup Poll did not make its debut until after his death) and the press. But even the sainted FDR had his critics as American forces sustained unprecedented casualties for a 20^th Century war.
Woodrow Wilson, who was elected on the slogan “He kept us out of war!” was nonetheless obliged to commit United States forces against Imperial Germany. Unrestricted submarine warfare waged by Germany – especially with the sinking of the Lusitania – and the subsequent uncovering of the infamous Zimmerman Telegram (in which Imperial Germany urged Mexico to attack the United States) had so aroused American passions that Wilson felt he had no peaceful options open.  Notwithstanding these circumstances, so concerned was Wilson to curry the favor of the American public that some scholars have speculated that his mental and physical breakdown in the last year of his term was due to his inability to cope with the stresses of maintaining a popular mandate.
The Great Emancipator himself, Abraham Lincoln, was pilloried in the press, by opposition politicians, and even his own generals as he tried to prosecute the nation’s bloodiest, and possibly most necessary war.  In fact, as historian Geoffrey Ward has noted,

“What is remarkable…is how little praise Lincoln got and how much abuse he endured without complaint.” 

In hindsight however we readily acknowledge that Mr. Lincoln’s war was an indispensable and possibly unavoidable turning point for this nation.  The dreadful knowledge which Lincoln carried internally, was that this war, however horrifying. however thankless and distasteful a task, was one that must be seen through to the bitter end.

Thus let us try not leap to judgment in the aftermath of President Bush’s annual State of the Union address.  The opposition in both Democratic and Republican parties have been looking anxiously at  opinion polls and American involvement in Iraq.  But, the question to ask is “What if the opposition is wrong?”  Only twice before in our history has America been threatened by external forces – once by the bandit Pancho Villa’s depredations in our Southwest, and once by British troops who actually burned the White House in the War of 1812.  In neither case did the enemy have or seek the capabilities which are actively being sought by our enemies in the Middle East and Afghanistan. In neither case did the civilian casualties inflicted rival those of the attack on the World Trade Center.  In neither case did the enemy seek to destroy utterly the United States, our population, our form of government.  In neither case were the stakes quite so high as they are today. 
Frederick J. Chiaventone – award-winning novelist, screenwriter, and retired Army officer taught International Security Affairs and counter-insurgency operations  at the US Army’s Command and General Staff College.

The New Yorker’s Global Warming Fib

The New Yorker’s Global Warming Fib
By Bill Steigerwald
FrontPageMagazine.com | January 31, 2007
It’s always fun to spot an embarrassing mistake in the haughty New Yorker. But it’s extra enjoyable when the error is made by Elizabeth Kolbert, the liberal-left magazine’s official publicity agent for the Global Warming Apocalypse.

Glaring mistakes like the latest one Kolbert made Jan. 22 are extremely rare. The New Yorker — winner of so many National Magazine Awards someone should call the Justice Department — has always striven for perfect accuracy.

In fact, it has a fetish for facts. Its vaunted battery of obsessive fact-checkers, now numbering 16, is legendary in journalism. But The New Yorker isn’t nearly as infallible as it thinks it is. It’s often caught being inaccurate or biased or both.

Just last week, conservative John Podhoretz pointed out on his National Review Online blog that Nicolas Lemann botched two important, easily verifiable facts about the Valerie Plame case in his Jan. 27 “Talk of the Town” item.

More serious is a defamation claim made in a 12-page letter by a Boston law firm on behalf of Chinese mathematician Dr. Shing-Tung Yau in connection with an Aug. 28, 2006, article. It demands a printed apology and alleges “egregious and actionable errors” and “shoddy journalism.”

Speaking of which, crusader Kolbert’s specialty is cranking out openly unfair and unbalanced articles on global warming like her epic “Climate of Man” trilogy in Spring 2005, which included a hilarious boo-boo that forced The New Yorker to do something it really hates — admit a mistake and run a correction.

As part of her “proof” that the Arctic ice cap was rapidly melting, Kolbert wrote that the speed of a glacier in Greenland “had increased to 7.8 miles per hour” from its 1993 flow-rate of “three and a half miles per hour.”

Kolbert meant 7.8 miles per year, which meant she was only off by a factor of 8,760. Unfortunately, her magazine’s fact-checkers, editors and copy editors apparently were too busy cheering her on to spot her error.

Kolbert’s latest gaffe can be found in her annoyingly critical Jan. 22 profile of Amory Lovins, the famous environmental genius and “natural capitalist” who, unlike Kolbert, prefers practical, pragmatic, market-driven solutions to energy conservation.

After confusingly toting up how many hundreds of billions Americans spend on gas, oil and energy each year, she concluded that “In 2007, total energy expenditures in the U.S. will come to more than a quadrillion dollars, or roughly a tenth of the country’s gross domestic product.”

Quadrillion? Kolbert actually meant “a trillion dollars.” And the annual U.S. GDP is about $13 trillion, not $10 quadrillion, as she implied. This time Kolbert was wrong by only a factor of 1,000.

No magazine — not even a great one — is perfect. Mistakes always will be made. Kolbert’s latest laugher is irrelevant compared to the junk journalism she practices in her global-warming propaganda pieces. And her mini-blunders only cause her magazine embarrassment because it foolishly sets itself up as infallible.

The New Yorker can continue to provide Kolbert with a soapbox to issue arrogant certitudes about the scientific causes and cures of global warming. It can produce all the egregiously left-wing journalism it wants. It’s still a free country.

But to avoid future ridicule, it might want to hire a few fact-checkers — or editors — who know how fast glaciers go, how big the U.S economy is, and the difference between a trillion and a quadrillion.

Dems’ Doubts Dog Hillary

Dems’ Doubts Dog Hillary
By Dick Morris and Eileen McGann
FrontPageMagazine.com | January 31, 2007
A neat bit of polling by the Gallup Organization shows that what’s hurting Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential primaries isn’t so much her vote on Iraq or even her flip-flops on the issue. What’s undermining her support among leftists is doubts about her electability.

The poll results suggest that many leftists see the primaries as a kind of audition where they assess not only whether they like or agree with a candidate, but whether she can lead them to the White House in 2008. This degree of pragmatism is often seen in Republican circles, but is relatively new on the other side of the aisle.

Gallup asked a national sample of Democratic primary voters from Jan. 5-7 if they’d vote for Hillary if the primary were today. About a third (34 percent) said they definitely would, and about half (52 percent) said they “might consider” voting for her.

The remaining 14 percent said they would “definitely not” support her in the primary.

Then Gallup followed up with the two-thirds of the sample that was not “definitely” voting for Hillary – asking why. The No. 1 reason? They felt she couldn’t win.

Twenty-nine percent cited the fear that she would lose the general election; 16 percent mentioned her inability to win the nomination as a “major reason” for not voting for her. Many cited both.

(Only 26 percent said the major reason for their lack of support was disagreement on the issues; 11 percent cited personal dislike of her, and 10 percent said they didn’t want “another Clinton in the White House.”)

This indicates that there is a large “secondary market” for attacks on Sen. Clinton. The primary market for such attacks is, of course, the legions of general-election voters who don’t like her and don’t think she should be president (including us).

But leftists, while not necessarily embracing the negatives themselves, see them as a cause to doubt her political viability – and thus a reason not to vote for her. So, attacks on Hillary are not just important among the Hillary-haters – they also fuel doubts even among Democratic true-believers.

This, while she faces a double (or triple) squeeze play – her charisma squeezed by the first female speaker of the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, and her ideological positioning under pressure from Sen. Barack Obama from the center and ex-Sen. John Edwards from the Left.

All that could leave her the second choice of too many Democrats – especially if they really conclude she can’t win.