How Deep Does The Rabbit Hole Go?

I came across a very interesting article by Tony Blankley this week.  This is a bit long, but if you're interested in the 2012 election, it's a must-read in terms of how the election field is shaping up:

The Republican primary field is obviously wide open, but it struck me that the Democratic Party's potential aspirants really are already down to two. Obviously, the president will be one of them, and if things aren't going so well for him by the spring of 2011, his only plausible challenger would be Hillary Clinton.

She made a recent obligatory denial of interest in running for president, but such denials are not taken seriously. After all, both the current president and the previous Democratic president flatly denied having any intention of running yet cheerfully turned up to take their oaths of office promptly thereafter.

Only God knows what will happen to America in the next year and a half (and he hasn't told me), but it is not implausible that by 2012, the Democratic Party will see Hillary Clinton's nomination as its best chance for keeping the White House.

Of course, if the economy comes booming back, unemployment is cut in half and there are no foreign policy disasters, President Barack Obama surely will get an unopposed nomination and probably his re-election. But if current estimates are right, that unemployment still may be close to double digits at the end of next year -- and particularly if foreign affairs go badly -- Hillary just might be the one.

It seems odd that a failed foreign policy might be the basis for a president's secretary of state to replace him on the presidential ticket, but it is beginning to set up that way.

Of course, as secretary of state, Hillary cannot plausibly be assigned any responsibility for a bad economy and high unemployment. Nor, perhaps ironically, would her fingerprints be on a stunningly unpopular health care plan that increases the national debt by trillions, increases the cost of health care premiums for the middle class and increases taxes on the middle class while also reducing the benefits to the middle class.

Nor, curiously, is she likely to be seen as responsible for the Obama administration's foreign policy. It has been reported repeatedly in major newspapers that she is one of the most marginalized secretaries of state in modern times. The White House has made little effort to disabuse the press and the public of that view. She was not even included in the president's Moscow summit. She is seen as the good soldier and team player with little voice in policy.

It isn't forgotten that foreign affairs were the major policy disputes between Clinton and Obama during the primary. She accused Obama of "being naive" about agreeing to unconditional meetings with leaders of Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, Syria and Cuba. She was -- and is -- a strong supporter of Israel and, during the campaign, was opposed to forcing Israel to freeze West Bank settlements unconditionally.

In April 2008, she was "deeply disturbed" by Russia's move to strengthen links to the separatist regions of Georgia -- Abkhazia and South Ossetia. At the time, she called on then-President George W. Bush to send a senior representative to Tbilisi to "show our support." She also condemned Russia for engaging in a "pressure campaign to prevent Ukraine from seeking deeper ties with NATO."

Regarding Iran, she favored immediate economic sanctions -- last year. She threatened military force if necessary to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons. She threatened Iran with nuclear annihilation if it used nuclear weapons on Israel.

This year, as each of those issues emerged, President Obama took a different approach. He had to reverse himself on the unconditional settlement freeze. He let the Russians invade Georgia and was slow to condemn them for it. Iran is pushing the United States (and the world) into a corner on its nuclear development. Israeli/Palestinian "peace" talks are about 98 percent of the way to complete failure of administration objectives.

The worse things get in foreign affairs -- and those dark clouds are getting darker and closer -- the better Hillary Clinton's foreign policy will look compared with President Obama's. Even now, her Gallup Poll job approval rating of 62 percent beats her president's number by about 10 percent.

In the 2012 Democratic Party primary, we may once again hear Hillary's advertisement that asked Americans whom we want answering the red phone at 3 a.m.

Huh!  We've talked about the Clinton 2012 conspiracy theory before (here and here, and even back before the election here).  This theory is making more and more sense to me.  It is Obama's job to sell the nation -- using the race card shield whenever necessary -- on the liberal buffet of government expansion, no matter the cost.  So what if he and Congressional Dems get taken out en masse in 2010 and 2012?  If they get these 'reforms' put into place, it's essentially a permanent shift in the political landscape of this country, and the game is over.  It doesn't matter if Republicans gain seats because they couldn't pull back from these permanent destructive entitlements even if they wanted to.

And, remember, this was Hillary's turn.  She supported Bill, even through the Monica Lewinsky affair.  Why?  Because she wanted her shot at the Oval Office more than anything else.  It's always been a little odd to me that she appeared to voluntarily take the back seat last June, but have you stopped to ask yourself what could have persuaded her to do so?  What about being not just the first woman President in American history, but also the one to sweep into office during a time when the American people are so desperate that they'll take anyone over the current failure (just don't ask John McCain how that works out)?

I could be wrong.  But darned if this doesn't look like an increasingly likely scenario, especially given two things:
1. Obama's continuing radicalization of America will continue to generate fireworks and friction with the American people, and unless he actually moderates, he is not likely to recover.
2. It is likely that Sarah Palin will run in 2012, and Hillary is the only one who can neutralize the gender sympathy card with her.  Otherwise, Palin's XX chromosomes will aid her in the same way that Obama's melanin aided him.  I think it's a dangerously shallow way to make decisions on voting, but let's be real.  A lot of people still do it.

Just keep this in mind as the next 18 months plays out.

There's my two cents.