http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/06/nyregion/06hillary.html As Clinton Wins G.O.P. Friends, Her Rivals' Task Toughens By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ Published: March 6, 2005 The intimate gathering at a private home in Corning, N.Y., was pretty typical for an upstate fund-raiser featuring Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton: dozens of donors clustered in the terrace, listening to her speak, as they sipped wine and nibbled on hors d'oeuvres. But one thing made the event unusual: The host was a prominent Republican businessman whose brother Amo Houghton was the popular nine-term Republican congressman from the area who, it turns out, gives Mrs. Clinton, a Democrat, an "A-plus" for the job she is doing. His brother James, chairman of Corning Inc., agreed. "When I introduced Hillary, I told the crowd that the last time a Houghton had a fund-raiser for a Democrat was about 1812," he said. With her 2006 re-election campaign approaching, New York Republican leaders vow to rally party loyalists in a broad effort to topple Mrs. Clinton, who has long engendered deep antipathy on the right. But as the fund-raiser last year in the heavily Republican town of Corning illustrated, the party may have a bit of a problem on its hands. In the four years since taking office, Mrs. Clinton has managed to cultivate a bipartisan, above-the-fray image that has made her a surprisingly welcome figure in some New York Republican circles, even as she remains exceedingly popular with her liberal base. A recent poll by The New York Times, for example, showed that Mrs. Clinton's popularity had sharply improved among Republicans voters surveyed, with 49 percent saying they approved of the job she was doing, compared with 37 percent who expressed similar sentiments in October 2002. But perhaps nothing demonstrates her improved standing with the opposition as much as the close ties she has forged with many leading Republican officials in the state, who say that they have been pleasantly surprised by what they describe as the nuts-and-bolts pragmatism of her style. Only five years ago, for example, Representative Thomas M. Reynolds of Buffalo mocked Mrs. Clinton as a "a tourist who has lost her way," alluding to the fact that she had not lived in New York before deciding to run for the Senate. But these days, Mr. Reynolds, a Republican who is frequently mentioned as a possible candidate for speaker of the House, says he considers Ms. Clinton an ally in his effort to deliver aid to western New York. In fact, he said that his work with Mrs. Clinton had prompted the local newspaper in his district to call them the "odd couple." "I like Senator Clinton," said Mr. Reynolds, a friend and adviser to Gov. George E. Pataki. "I've found that when she says she will take on a job with me, she does it." But surely Mr. Reynolds wants a Republican to take Mrs. Clinton's seat, no? "New York is a big blue state," he responded, referring to the states with large Democratic voter enrollment. "I will work with whoever the electorate puts in those positions." Nobody expects top Republicans like Mr. Reynolds to cross party lines and endorse Mrs. Clinton. But some political strategists say the Republican Party will have a hard time making a strong case against her, since she will be able to point to the positive reviews she has gotten from her Republican colleagues over the year. "It certainly helps to neutralize the attacks against her," said Lee M. Miringoff, the director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. The emerging view of Mrs. Clinton among leading New York Republicans would have been unimaginable four years ago, when her political rivals cast her as a carpetbagger who had no real interest in New York beyond seeing it as a springboard to the presidency. Political analysts say that Mrs. Clinton's improved standing reflects her meticulous efforts to win over critics - as well as the tendency among politicians to look past party differences and find common interests once in office. But these strategists also say that the unusually open support she is enjoying among Republicans highlights a lack of party discipline that has been plaguing the New York Republican Party in recent years. Mr. Miringoff said that many rank-and-file Republicans apparently felt they had less to lose in bucking the party leadership than in straining relations with a highly popular United States senator. "It's a party that is really hurting," Mr. Miringoff said, referring to Republicans. "And so self-interest and self-preservation are taking over." The Republicans giving Mrs. Clinton high marks include Representative John M. McHugh, who represents New York's economically beleaguered North Country, a politically conservative region that Mrs. Clinton visits frequently. In an interview, the congressman said that Mrs. Clinton had been helpful to him from her seat on the Senate Armed Services Committee in steering money to Fort Drum, an Army base in Watertown that provides an economic lift to the area. "Our other senators have been helpful," he said, referring to the work Mrs. Clinton's predecessors have done on behalf of Fort Drum. "But they have not had the advantage of being on the authorizing committee." As for the 2006 Senate race, he did not sound particularly enthusiastic about the prospect of campaigning against Mrs. Clinton. "We share constituents," explained Mr. McHugh, "and, frankly, the challenges are big enough without erecting artificial partisan barriers." Another Republican, Representative Peter T. King of Nassau County, struck a similar note in recent interview. He described Mrs. Clinton as a celebrity senator who is willing to take a subordinate role on an issue she cares about, rather than allowing her involvement to become a distraction. For instance, Mr. King recalled an occasion when Mrs. Clinton suggested that he find another senator to be a co-sponsor of legislation that would benefit New York, because she figured that her presence on the bill would fire up the opposition. "There are very few politicians in public life who have the composure to step back, knowing that they will win in the end," he said. Mr. King also said that Mrs. Clinton had been anything but the liberal extremist that her conservative critics accused her of being. "I'm not going to vote for her and probably disagree with her on 70 percent of the issues," he said. "But I think that too many Republicans who criticize Hillary Clinton sound like Michael Moore criticizing George Bush."
Please condense this information for me. I'm not looking for a data dump, but rather an insightful summary of what she's accomplished. Bullet-point format should be fine. Thanks in advance.
Can't somebody provide me a list of accomplishments without having to scour through websites? Surely one of the democratic partisans on the board has followed her Senate career and can write a bit about this! I would hope so, since right now she's the odds on favorite to win the party nomination in 2008!
can i have information on what each of the 55 republican senators have done recently? thanks. by tomorrow morning. 12 sized font times roman please. oh and i want the mla citations.
My request was legitimate. This is a thread about Hillary. Your request would be better suited in threads on each of the 55 (gosh that's a lot!) republican senators. It's somewhat telling that nobody can provide me with any accomplishments that Hillary has to her credit. Am I to assume that she has done nothing as a senator?
its not legitimate at all. if you are sincerely interested about her you were provided the link. lazy republicans are hurting our economy. why do you hate america?
I'm glad the Democrats have finally figured out the formula to create a President. 1. Pick an extreme liberal 2. Pick a Senator 3. Pick someone from the Northeast 4. Pick someone with a controversial past Oh wait, that's the same formula that got you libs beat last November. Glad you've learned from that defeat...
Enjoy it, thudpucker. Hillary Clinton will be elected President in 2008. By the way, I hear France is a great place to live, especially if you are a right-wing nutjob.
Well, this clearly isn't going to die away. Hillary keeps staying in the news, or else there are some columnists who have absolutely nothing else to write about. March 16, 2005 OP-ED COLUMNIST Who Gets It? Hillary By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF f the Democratic Party wants to figure out how to win national elections again, it has an unexpected guide: Hillary Rodham Clinton. Senator Clinton, much more than most in her party, understands how the national Democratic Party needs to rebrand itself. She gets it - perhaps that's what 17 years in socially conservative Arkansas does to you. The first lesson Mrs. Clinton is demonstrating is the need to talk much more openly about God and prayer. That resonates in a country where a Pew poll found that 60 percent of Americans pray at least once a day. "I've always been a praying person," Mrs. Clinton declared recently. Of course, this approach works in her case only because her religious faith is longstanding. It didn't work for Howard Dean when he described the Book of Job as his favorite book in the New Testament. With a candidate like him, you'd worry that more talk about religion would lead to comments about how much he treasures the Twelfth Commandment. Democrats are usually more comfortable talking about sex than God. But that doesn't work in a country where 70 percent say that "presidents should have strong religious beliefs." Then there's abortion. Mrs. Clinton took a hugely important step in January when she sought common ground and described abortion as a "sad, even tragic choice to many, many women." The Democratic Party commits seppuku in the heartland by coming across as indifferent to people's doubts about abortions or even as pro-abortion. A Times poll in January found that 61 percent of Americans favor tighter restrictions on abortion, or even a ban, while only 36 percent agree with the Democratic Party position backing current abortion law. That doesn't mean that there's no middle ground on abortion. In fact, most of America is standing, conflicted, on middle ground. Many people are deeply uncomfortable with abortions, but they also don't want women or doctors going to prison, and they don't want teenage girls dying because of coat-hanger abortions. What has been lethal for Democrats has not been their pro-choice position as such, but the perception that they don't even share public qualms about abortion. Mrs. Clinton has helped turn the debate around by emerging as both pro-choice and anti-abortion. That is potentially a winning position for Democrats. Abortions fell steadily under Bill Clinton, who espoused that position, and have increased significantly during President Bush's presidency. (One theory is that economic difficulties have left more pregnant women feeling that they cannot afford a baby.) Mrs. Clinton is also hard to dismiss as a screechy obstructionist because she's gone out of her way to be collegial in the Senate and to work with Republicans from Trent Lott to Sam Brownback. Senator John Kerry never seemed much liked by his colleagues, while other senators seem to like Mrs. Clinton. Perhaps it's that, according to New York magazine, she surprises other senators by popping up during meetings and asking: Anybody want a coffee? The makeover is working with New York State voters. Mrs. Clinton has an approval rating in the state of 69 percent, according to a Times poll published last month, and her negative ratings have tumbled to 21 percent. That puts her approval rating even higher than that of New York's popular senior senator, Charles Schumer. Still, I doubt that Mrs. Clinton can be elected president. I use my hometown, the farming community of Yamhill, Ore., as my touchstone for the heartland, and I have a hard time imagining that she could do well there. Ambitious, high-achieving women are still a turnoff in many areas, particularly if they're liberal and feminist. And that's not just in America: Margaret Thatcher would never have been elected prime minister if she'd been in the Labor Party. In small towns like Yamhill, any candidate from New York carries a lot of baggage, and Mrs. Clinton more than most. Moreover, television magnifies her emotional reserve and turns her into a frost queen. Mrs. Clinton's negative ratings nationally were still around 40 percent at last count, and Hillary-hating thrives. So Mrs. Clinton may not be able to get there from here, and in any case it's way too early to speculate meaningfully about 2008. But it's just the right time for Democrats to be fretting about how to reconnect to the heartland, and they can't find a better model for how to do that than Mrs. Clinton. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/16/opinion/16kris.html I still can't imagine her getting the nomination, but there sure are some people out there who intend to keep the idea alive. We'll see how it plays out. Keep D&D Civil!!
