Thread: LEFT LANE TO AN '08 DISASTER

LEFT LANE TO AN '08 DISASTER
By CHARLES HURT


November 1, 2007 -- WASHINGTON - If Hillary Rod ham Clinton had a bad night at the Democratic debate as she dodged around the issue of whether to give illegal aliens driver's licenses, she should brace herself for the general election, if she gets that far.
A haunting problem for Clinton is that illegal-immigrant coddling plans such as Gov. Spitzer's - no matter how they're dressed up in the guise of enhancing security - enrage a huge majority of Americans, especially the widely courted independent voters.

"I love it," a Republican strategist in Washington chortled. "This is an 80-20 issue for us and they're walking right into it."

That would be "80-20," as in 80 percent of Americans oppose it, 20 percent support it.

Those are rare gems in politics. You probably couldn't get 80 percent of Americans to go to a baseball game. Or eat apple pie. Or talk to their mother.

But giving illegal aliens driver's licenses?

"The vast majority of Americans are against this - especially among likely voters. She's clearly out of touch," said GOP pollster John McLaughlin, who has surveyed extensively on the issue.

In reliably Democratic states, such as New York and California, he said, voters oppose such plans by 75 percent.

"Even among Latinos, they're against it because the ones who are eligible to vote have played by the rules and aren't eager to have them broken now," McLaughlin said.

In the debate, Clinton spun in circles as she hadn't done since last year, when she reinvented her war position.

The strong public disapproval of the plan likely explains why Clinton refuses to fully embrace it.

Yet she won't oppose it, either, because it's favored by many unions, immigrant activist groups and hard-left Democrats who vote in the primaries.

The result of her calculations has left her open to an onslaught of charges of evasiveness, waffling and Clintonian nuance that have given her rivals a real opening to do some damage two months before the first caucus votes.

And if she survives that onslaught as polls suggest she will, then she faces an even greater challenge in the general election when she'll be defending her support - tepid as it may be - for a plan so many loathe.

www.nypost.com

That stumble probably cost her the Presidency and if she's dumb enough to miss the most important issue of the American People, then rightly so.

I hope the others are watching and get the message loud and clear in both parties.

She has to be depending upon voter fraud or she's out of touch with the public (citizens that is).