Don’t Be Seduced by Clinton’s “Moderate” Liberalism

While President Obama was out there this week blasting critics who question his inability to say the words “radical Islam,” Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton took a slightly different approach. While essentially on the same page as the president, Hillary did manage to say the words. She used the phrase “radical Islamism,” but that’s still a hell of a lot closer to the mark than Obama has ever gotten.

Hillary is not quite the radical leftist that is our current president. She wasn’t indoctrinated by Marxists, domestic terrorists, and angry black radicals. No one wonders whether or not she keeps a Muslim prayer rug hidden in her bedroom closet. Hillary worships at the altar of only one religion: The Church of Public Opinion. And like her husband, she has no problem bending her views this way and that to increase her popularity. For voters who yearn for the mythical days of “bipartisan compromise,” she’s going to look very attractive, despite her animosity towards the Republican Party. Just look at her foreign policy speech last week; it could have been delivered by Paul Ryan with very few edits.

But see, there’s a reason why Trump destroyed his Republican challengers in the primaries. Things have changed. This isn’t 2008, when a guy like John McCain – a guy who wanted to put a Democrat on his ticket – made an acceptable presidential nominee. If Trump hadn’t been in the race, the nomination would have almost certainly gone to Ted Cruz. Conservatives have watched Barack Obama yank this country so far down the liberal rabbit hole that a guy like Jeb Bush or John Kasich just ain’t gonna get the job done.

In moderate times, a moderate Republican fits the bill. But these are not moderate times.

At no point in history could a conservative feel good about voting for Hillary Clinton, but one can imagine a time when we could have regarded her impending presidency with an eye-roll and a sigh. Oh well, it is what it is, we might say. Nothing to cheer about, but hell, at least she’s not Bernie Sanders.

But we have left those times behind, and the surprising rise of Sanders is a pretty good symbol of that truth. Under Obama, the Democratic Party has lurched nauseatingly to the left, and the phrase “liberal Democrat” doesn’t even convey the full measure of their agenda. Therefore, it’s not enough to elect a president who will stay the course. It’s not even enough to elect a president who might nudge us a little closer to the political middle.

No, if there is still any chance of preserving the great American experiment that was set in motion more than 200 years ago, that window of opportunity is rapidly closing. We have enemies we can barely bring ourselves to name, job-killing machinations supported by both parties, an illegal immigration situation that can only be described as a crisis, and a culture shift – codified into law by the Obama administration – that threatens to unravel not just our nation’s values, but common sense itself. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

If Donald Trump’s proposals sound extreme, it’s because he’s the first national-level politician in ages to recognize that we need to do more than just pump the brakes. We’re headed straight into the side of a mountain. Whether we hit that mountain at 1,000 mph or 10,000 mph, the result will be the same.