Sunday, October 14, 2007

Hillary as a GOP Rallying Cry

Former Republican Mayor of Raleigh, Tom Fetzer (who was a guest panelist on NCSpin this morning), is quoted in the N&O hoping that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee for president, as it will give the state GOP a new lease on life.

Fetzer is now a political consultant, and you KNOW how they plot! He's working for Republican candidate for N.C. governor Bill Graham.

"If past history is a guide, she is going to get 40 percent of the vote in North Carolina," Fetzer said of Clinton. "When Republicans get in the high 50s or the low 60s, the Republicans wreak havoc."

Havoc is exactly the word for it.

We confess that it's been our own personal worry for months, that the Hillary Clinton candidacy would do us no good in North Carolina on the local, the regional, and the statewide scene.

But like all conventional wisdom, our worries and Tom Fetzer's wet dream may turn out to be less ... fulfilling than initially imagined. First, we're not quite resigned yet to the Hillary candidacy (close but not entirely). And second, the Right Wing may have exhausted the limits of its anti-Clintonian hatred by next August, so that Fetzer's assumption of a white-hot anti-Hillary movement in N.C. may be vastly exaggerated.

Especially considering that the state's Republican candidates for governor are being so out-paced by Democratic candidate fundraising. The air has already gone out of the GOP balloon. Might take more than Hillary to reinflate it.

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