Investor's Business Daily, May 8th, 2007
Politics: Hillary Clinton's handlers are running away from Segolene Royal after her loss in France. Aside from being women, they insist, the two don't have much in common. Really?
Truth is, Clinton and Royal share a significant common bond beyond their gender: Their positions on many issues can only be described as socialist.
It's true that Royal, who lost to Nicolas Sarkozy in the French presidential election, is openly socialist, while Clinton campaigns as a Democrat.
But Clinton's views are no more conservative than her European counterpart. It's just that she tries to run to the right because she can't politically afford to be identified accurately.
We can already hear the howls, but we don't think we're overstating the point here. Look at the common ground found in the candidates' positions:
Taxation: If elected, Clinton would no doubt hike taxes by letting the Bush tax cuts that she voted against expire. At a 2004 fundraiser, Clinton told supporters: "We're saying that for America to get back on track, we're probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."
If that last line is not a tenet of you-know-what, what is?
Clinton has threatened, as well, to seize oil company profits and use them for government projects. Though she did not overtly call for a tax hike, Royal declared the "superprofits" of successful companies as the "enemy." One of the corporations she singled out was Total, an oil firm that set a record with $17 billion in profits last year.
Royal also said that she would look at the 60% rate levied on high-income earners, an implication that it might go higher under her presidency.
Royal's husband, uh, partner Francois Hollande, who also happens to be the Socialist Party leader, told Le Parisien in January that the party would raise taxes on those who earned more than $65,000 a year (4,000 euros a month).
"It was the second time he'd advocated taking more money from 'rich' people," Bloomberg reported in February.
So, who was it -- Royal or Clinton -- who said "the unfettered rein of financial profit is intolerable for the general interest," and who promised to tax capital more than labor and to reduce income equality?
For the record, it was Royal. But who can deny that it just as well could have been Clinton?
Health care: Clinton has long supported a socialist model in which the government takes over the medical coverage of the entire nation. While in the White House as first lady, she pushed for a health care plan that would have nationalized one-seventh of the U.S. economy.
Royal promised that, if elected, every citizen would have the right to subsidized care. In her 100-point 16residential pact" issued in February, she said she would increase government spending on health care.
Jobs: Both Clinton and Royal believe the state should be involved in creating jobs. Royal proposed 500,000 "springboard" jobs be given to young workers, even those who lack skills. The costs would be paid by France's regional governments for the first year of the program.
Clinton has bragged on the campaign trail about the "22 million jobs" "we created" in the 1990s, saying, "We can do that again." As we recall, quite a few of those were government jobs.
Spending taxpayers' money: Protecting the country's social model of wealth redistribution was one of Royal's main campaign points. How does this differ from Clinton's position on funding for social programs?
We end with another quiz. Which of the female presidential candidates said this: "The unfettered free market has been the most radically destructive force in ... the last generation"?
Sounds like Royal again. But this time it was Clinton, an acolyte of the late socialist professor Saul Alinsky, speaking clearly from the left in a 1996 C-SPAN interview.
