Hillary Clinton Wins the I Hate Bush Debate

But loses the debate for the Dem nomination.
The chickens are coming home to roost!

Here's a slice of Hillary's bid to avoid answering any tough questions by attacking President Bush (from NYTimes debate transcript):

• "I have stood against George Bush and his failed policies. "
• "I have been standing against the Republicans, George Bush and Dick Cheney."
• "the irresponsible spending policies of George Bush and the Republican Congress. "
• "George Bush had no authority to take any military action in Iran."
• "which is we've got to do everything we can to prevent George Bush and the Republicans from doing something on their own to take offensive military action against Iran. "
• "we reject and do not believe George Bush has any authority to do anything else."
• "I think that what we're trying to do here is put pressure on the Bush administration. Joe's absolutely right -- George Bush can do all of this without anybody. You know, that's the great tragedy, and that's why we've got to rein him in."
• "Everybody agrees up here that President Bush has made a total mess out of the situation with Iran."
• "it is abundantly clear that President Bush does not intend to end the war while he is still president."
• "We need a lot of Americans trying to fan out across the world following President Bush because he's going to leave so many problems."
• "160,000 troops that George Bush has there [in Iraq] today."
• "We've got to turn the page on George Bush and Dick Cheney."
• "[T]he Supreme Court handed the presidency to George Bush."
• "I put fiscal responsibility first, because we have to change the Bush tax cuts, which I am committed to doing. "
• "George Bush understood that, the Republicans understood that. They wanted to decimate that balanced budget and a surplus because they knew that that would give them a free hand to try to privatize Social Security."
• "[A] president who actually believed in Social Security, which George Bush does not."
• "You know, my view is we go toward fiscal responsibility, which is hard. It's not going to be easy inheriting what we're going to be inheriting from Bush and the Republicans."
• "we might even have to look at the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which the Bush administration has been filling up beyond any expectation of need."
• "We have the average American family losing $1,000 in income, and George Bush and his cronies can't figure out how they can give even more tax cuts to the wealthiest of Americans."
• "I said that I'm in favor of doing something about the ATM [editor: Alternative Minimum Tax, or ATM machine for government free spending]. How we do it and how we put the package together, everybody knows, is extremely complicated. It's not going to happen while George Bush is president."
• "We have failed, and George Bush has failed." [on Immigration]
• "It's just outrageous that under President Bush, the National Institutes of Health has been basically decreased in funding."

President Bush's name came up in the debate 40 times! More than half of those mentions were by Hillary, sometimes twice in the same answer.

Newsflash to Hillary: President Bush isn't running in 2008. Don't you think you need to come up with some policies YOU would impelement if elected? Thus far, all we've heard from you is a laundry list of new spending which stands at $763 Billion as of October 17. So much for fiscal responsbility.

The only name that came up in candidate answers that even came close to Bush was that of Hillary Clinton, mentioned 18 times by the other candidates.

Hillary Dodges the Tough Questions & Missteps on Immigration

News Analysis:

--Hillary Continued A Strategy Of "Avoiding Direct Answers To Questions." "[S]he continued her strategy of avoiding direct answers to questions: She wouldn't say how she would address Social Security; she declined to pledge whether she would stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, or say whether she supports giving driver's licenses to illegal immigrants." (Nedra Pickler, "Clinton Gets No Love In Democrats Debate," The Associated Press, 10/31/07)

--The Politico's Roger Simon: "In a debate against six Democratic opponents at Drexel University here Tuesday, Clinton gave the worst performance of her entire campaign....It was that for two hours she dodged and weaved, parsed and stonewalled." (Roger Simon, Op-Ed, "Obama, Edwards Attack; Clinton Bombs Debate," The Politico, 10/31/07)

--Time's Mark Halperin: "The failure of her performance was cumulative ...More defensive than usual, and at times too political and too hot tempered. Borderline disastrous moment at the end when she gave an equivocal answer about drivers licenses for illegal immigrants in New York ..." (Mark Halperin, "Hillary Clinton, Grade: C-," Time.com, 10/31/07)

--NBC Political Director Chuck Todd: "I think she got stuck when she tries very hard not to answer specifics...[I] think she was trying to figure out a way to have it both ways. I hate to put it in those terms but I think that's what she was trying....Clinton increasingly got worse as the night went on." (MSNBC's "Hardball," 10/30/07)

--ABC's George Stephanopoulos: "I do believe Hillary lost last night." (ABC's "Good Morning America," 10/31/07)

--MSNBC's Chris Matthews: "Hillary Clinton would not answer the question straight." (MSNBC's "Hardball," 10/30/07)

--Newsweek's Howard Fineman: "At the very end of the debate, she just came off like a politician who didn't want to answer the question." (MSNBC's "Hardball," 10/30/07)

--The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza: "[S]he did struggle toward the end of the debate in a question about her support (or lack thereof) for Gov. Eliot Spitzer's (D) plan to offer driver's licenses for illegal immigrants." (Chris Cillizza, "Democratic Debate Wrap Up: Clinton Under Attack," The Washington Post's "The Fix" Blog, blog.washingtonpost.com, 10/30/07)

--ABC's "The Note": "It was almost certainly Clinton's weakest performance of the cycle..." (ABC's "The Note," 10/31/07)

--NBC's "First Read": "[Hillary] got weaker as the night went on. The exchange over driver's licenses for illegal immigrants allowed her opponents to drive home a narrative that has begun to develop for Clinton at these debates: that she never actually answers the tough questions." (NBC's "First Read," 10/31/07)

--The Des Moines Register's David Yepsen: "Hillary Clinton ... did not have a good night...She turned in an uneven, sometimes waffling performance." (David Yepsen, Op-Ed, "Johnny Be Good," The Des Moines Register, 10/30/07)

OUCH! That's gotta hurt!