After losing two presidential campaigns, former State Secretary Hillary Clinton could have learned from her own errors, and she could have accident-proofed her campaign.
Instead, she just called for a “formal deprogramming” of political rivals, whom she described as “cult members.”
She had no plan to reckon with the much larger number of Americans who gave her proposals a fair shake but ultimately preferred something different.
Clinton made the remarks during an interview with CNN stalwart Christiane Amanpour.
Amanpour asked, “When you look at how to go forward for the country, as you say, is there any area of coalition building that can happen? There are pragmatic Republicans, as you say. Could there be a whole new way of trying to get legislation going and cross-party governance going by Democrats and certain Republicans forming a coalition?”
Clinton described “deprogramming” as necessary for bipartisanship.
She said —
Well, you saw the number of Republicans who voted along with Democrats who voted along with Republicans to keep the government open. So, there’s clearly a common-sense, sane part of the Republican caucus in the House.
But I think they are intimidated. They oftentimes say and do things which they know better than to say or do, and it will require us defeating those most extreme measures and the people who promote them in order to try to get to some common ground where people can, again, work together. That’s the way it used to be. I mean, we had very strong partisans in both parties in the past, and we had very bitter battles over all kinds of things: gun control and climate change and the economy and taxes. But there wasn’t this little tail of extremism wagging the dog of the Republican Party, as it is today.
And sadly, so many of those extremists, those MAGA extremists, take their marching orders from Donald Trump, who has no credibility left by any measure. He’s only in it for himself. He’s now defending himself in civil action and criminal action, and when do they break with him? Because at some point, y’know, maybe there needs to be a formal deprogramming of the cult members. But something needs to happen…
At some point, there needs to be a backlash against the control that this small group of extremists have. And I don’t know who will lead that, but let’s hope whoever becomes the new speaker will.
Former President Donald Trump did not, in fact, order his supporters to oust former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. In fact, Trump endorsed McCarthy for House speaker in January, after the third of fifteen votes.
Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., acted of his own accord when he moved to vacate the speaker’s chair.
Still, Amanpour encouraged Clinton to relitigate her 2016 race against Trump.
“And how do you do that? Because you said that you have to defeat them by defeating their leader. Their leader is Donald Trump. Even you have said that you expect him to be the Republican nominee,” Amanpour asked. “How do you process that this person who defeated you in 2016 is still at it?”
Clinton repeated herself.
“We have to defeat him… We have to just be smarter about how we’re trying to empower the right people inside the Republican Party,” Clinton said.
“It’s the classic tale of an authoritarian populist who really has a grip on the emotion, psychological needs and desires of a portion of the, uh, population… So, it is like a cult, and somebody has to break that momentum. And that’s why I believe Joe Biden will defeat him, and hopefully then that will be the end. And the fever will break and Republicans will try to get back to fighting about issues among themselves and electing people who are at least responsible and accountable.”
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The Horn editorial team