But Hillary, isn’t that YOUR fault?

May 2, 2008 by lestro

by lestro

I was reading David Brooks’ column today and I am not sure what his point was, as this stopped me in my tracks:

New dynamos like India and China threaten American dominance thanks to their cheap labor and manipulated currencies. Now, everything is made abroad. American manufacturing is in decline. The rest of the economy is threatened. Hillary Clinton summarized the narrative this week: “They came for the steel companies and nobody said anything. They came for the auto companies and nobody said anything. They came for the office companies, people who did white-collar service jobs, and no one said anything. And they came for the professional jobs that could be outsourced, and nobody said anything.”

Now, correct me if I am wrong, but wasn’t it the Clinton Administration – including the first lady – that promoted NAFTA, as well as granted Most Favored Nation status to China?

And hasn’t she been in the Senate for eight years and on the national stage for 16? Shouldn’t she have said something before now?

You know, something other than this:

“I think, on balance, NAFTA has been good for New York and America.” (Jan. 5, 2004)

or this:

or this:

Beyond that, the language she uses to describe the current situation is based on a very famous bit of poetry about the Holocaust and Hillary seems to have learned nothing from it. The point is to speak out against injustice even if it doesn’t seem to effect you (the ends with “And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up”).

But Hillary, who was IN POWER THE WHOLE TIME, said nothing until she got to Ohio in 2008 and realized that primary voters there were not happy about NAFTA.

During all of her time in Washington, she defended NAFTA, despite what she says now. It is one thing to say she opposed it but couldn’t speak out because she was a member of the administration, but her most famous quote is from 2004, well after Bush took over the big chair and she was a senator.

And if she supported NAFTA in 2004, but now says she didn’t, the real question is, to whom was she lying: New Yorkers or Ohioans?

That’s not leadership. That’s Bush-style revisionist history. One would think a senator could speak her mind on the issues.

Perhaps if they came for cushy government jobs, then she would have spoken out…