How Hillary Can Still Win the Republican Nomination, An Opinion

For a while there, it looked as though Hillary Clinton’s life’s dream to be President of the United States had been dashed. She was winning hard-working state after hard-working state and still losing the nomination…because of some irksome Democrat winner-doesn’t-take-all rule…and don’t get her started on those undemocratic, anti-hardworking caucus states.

Heading toward the last three primaries, Hillary was left with only one avenue [other than waiting around for someone to die].  She would have to convince the party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee to count all of her votes in Florida and Michigan and give none of the Michigan “uncommitteds” to Obama.

Her chances weren’t good. Even Clinton superdelegate New York Governor David Paterson took her high-minded arguments about rights “rooted in and sustained by the principle that our founders set forth in the Declaration of Independence” to be “a little desperation on the part of a woman I still support and will support until she makes a different determination." As in, if she goes through with this, I’m so switching to Obama.

Clearly, the Democrats are too sexist, too misogynist, too anti-woman suffrage and too opposed to civil rights, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution to credit Hillary with the extra votes that will draw in superdelegates and clinch the nomination.

Some bloggers have prognosticated that she’ll rally her supporters and run as an independent. But she’s already $31 million in debt and in need of a larger organization to carry her forward--an organization that appreciates and needs her as much as she needs them.

Say, the Republican Party.

Q. Who put her over the top in Ohio [and sort of in Texas, where she won the popular vote but lost the delegate count]?

A. Right wing Republican Commander in Chief of Operation Chaos Rush Limbaugh.

Q. Who gave her a much needed newspaper endorsement in Pennsylvania?

A. Vast right wing Republican conspiracy leader and Pittsburgh Tribune-Review publisher Richard Mellon Scaife.

Q. Who offered to campaign for her if McCain became the Republican nominee because Hillary’s the more conservative of the two?

A. Wisecracking right wing Republican pundit Ann Coulter.

Q. Who put together the election analysis maps Hillary quotes to prove that she can do better against McCain than Obama?

A. Right wing Republican consultant and “architect of the last two Republican presidential victories” Karl Rove.

It is well known that Hillary was one of the Goldwater Girls who campaigned for right wing Republican Barry Goldwater in 1964, so a joining together of her and that party in 2008 should not come as a surprise. McCain’s candidacy has been a listless compromise not likely to win them the White House, anyway, and Hillary is over a decade younger.

Only a small technicality stands between Hillary and the Republican nomination-- McCain’s delegate count of 1500, well over the 1191 required.

No problem.

Hillary has been saying since Obama surpassed her that “there is no such thing as a pledged delegate” in the Democratic Party, because all delegates can change their mind at the convention. In the Republican Party, according to Wikipedia, “state party by-laws determine whether each delegate is pledged and for how many ballots.” In other words, Republican delegates are unpledged, too, in the sense that Hillary and Karl can make a case that, under force majeure conditions, such as when a new candidate is called for, all states must operate under the same rule and all prior rules are suspended.

Plus, there is the indisputable fact that Hillary is entering the Republican race with an estimated total of 1779 delegates--more, if she sticks with the Democrats through the last three primaries--which instantly renders McCain’s count puny. Hill and Karl will argue that these delegates are verifiable and that there is no written Republican rule against transferring delegates from another party. In the interest of unity, Hillary will magnanimously drop all efforts to include Florida and Michigan in her total

Why will the Republican Party accept these new rules and vote Hillary their nominee on the first ballot? Because she is a stronger candidate than McCain and because she has already demonstrated her dedication to destroying the Democratic Party. If she has to mount an energy-sapping campaign just to end up as Obama’s underling vice president, she might as well risk it all and go for the Republican gold.