WAR PLACES HILL IN A POLITICAL NO-MAN'S-LAND By DEBORAH ORIN
December 1, 2005 -- SEN. Hillary Clinton is sud denly getting scrunched in a squeeze play of her own making on Iraq - because it's an issue where her husband's old grab-the-center strategy just doesn't work.
For much of 2005, pundits hailed Sen. Clinton's smarts for edging to the center on issues like abortion and supporting the Iraq war, saying she was setting herself up as a more moderate figure who could woo swing voters in 2008.
The theory was that Democrats on the Deaniac/MoveOn.org left are so wild about Hillary - and so eager for Clinton II - that they'd happily let her edge right if that made her more electable.
It was her version of Bill Clinton's triangulation on issues like welfare reform - a "third way" strategy of grabbing the center and painting Republicans to the right and Democrats to the left as extremists.
"The problem is that triangulation is '90s politics - she thought she could hug Bush on Iraq and take her left base for granted, but post-9/11 politics is polarized and Iraq is the defining issue," says GOP pollster John McLaughlin.
"There's no center on Iraq. It leaves her in no-man's-land. And she needs foreign-policy credentials to be president - a dove won't do it. Women heads of state need to be hawks like Britain's Margaret Thatcher or Israel's Golda Meir."
A new RasmussenReports.com poll suggests Clinton may be paying a price - just 25 percent nationally now vow to definitely back her for president if she runs in 2008 while 40 percent vow to vote against her. It's her lowest support in 2005. If she runs, Clinton is sure to face an anti-war rival on the left whether it's Al Gore or Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) - and now, suddenly to her right she'll likely face Virginia Gov. Mark Warner.
Warner didn't have to vote on the war (just as Bill Clinton didn't have to vote on the 1991 Gulf War) so he can put his focus on what to do next in Iraq and rooting for victory rather than second-guessing Bush over the past.