Wow, did I actually say that? Has your lovely Digger lost his mind? Well not entirely but I may have for one day liked Hillary Clinton. It's the end of the world I tell ya'.

Why would I ever like Hillary Clinton? Well while the rest of the Conservative Blogosphere takes off their gloves on Hillary claiming she's pandering to the Conservative base with here recent hard line stance on immigration -- I welcome it. Yesterday in a Washington Times article they showed how Hillary is trying to shake the liberal label.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is staking out a position on illegal immigration that is more conservative than President Bush, a strategy that supporters and detractors alike see as a way for the New York Democrat to shake the "liberal" label and appeal to traditionally Republican states.

Mrs. Clinton — who is tagged as a liberal because of her plan for nationalized health care and various remarks during her husband's presidency — is taking an increasingly vocal and hard-line stance on an issue that ranks among the highest concerns for voters, particularly Republicans.

...

In an interview on WABC radio, she said: "I am, you know, adamantly against illegal immigrants."

"Clearly, we have to make some tough decisions as a country, and one of them ought to be coming up with a much better entry-and-exit system so that if we're going to let people in for the work that otherwise would not be done, let's have a system that keeps track of them," she said.

Now before you bonk me on the head for easily being bamboozled by a leftie just trying to look like a good guy to us on the right, let me say that neither President Bush, Asa Hutchinson, David Drier nor a majority of the Republican Congress and Senators ever have uttered such words. Not one of them has ever said "I am adamantly against Illegal Immigrants". On the contrary they have only continued their ridiculous rant of giving amnesty for these lawbreakers. If anything Hillary has put the whole sack of stinky beans on the table and dared the Republicans to take a stand on something they don't seem to want to address.

"People have to stop employing illegal immigrants," she said. "I mean, come up to Westchester, go to Suffolk and Nassau counties, stand on the street corners in Brooklyn or the Bronx. You're going to see loads of people waiting to get picked up to go do yard work and construction work and domestic work."

...

Moving to the right of even some Republicans, the former first lady told WABC she favors "at least a visa ID, some kind of entry-and-exit ID. And ... perhaps, although I'm not a big fan of it, we might have to move towards an ID system even for citizens."

Is she actually endorsing a Patriot Act solution here? It seems so. While most on the left would decry such an invasion into citizens civil rights it seems that Hillary believes that the situation is dire enough to sacrifice some civil rights in order to have a drastic increase in security.

Of course all anyone focuses on is the political ramifications of her move. How she's trying to just pander to the right and increase her chances of a 2008 presidential election I think they miss the point. Take Dick Morris' position on her recent comments.

"I think she is trying to move to the right, and immigration is one of the ways she is using to do it," said political strategist Dick Morris, who has a history of working with former President Clinton.

"I think this is a particularly misguided choice on her part, however, since two-thirds of Bush's margin this time was due to his closure of the Democratic margin of victory among Hispanics."

Always looking for the negative, those political analysts are.

Here's David Limbaugh's comments on it.

... How about continuing to be progressive while pretending to move to the right for electability purposes? With Hillary tacking to the right on national security and now immigration issues, that seems to be the wave of the future.

But Hillary's smarter (and more calculating) than Tom Daschle. Daschle didn't start moving to the right (inside his home state) until late in the campaign when he knew he was in trouble. Hillary has started wearing her combat fatigues and her border patrol costume already so that when the campaign comes it will look like she actually believes in these things.

Then we have the sad opinion by Hindrocket over at Powerline

It's interesting that she apparently doesn't believe that going conservative on immigration will hurt her among Democratic primary voters--another indication that immigration reform is a bipartisan issue. Looking toward the general election, assuming Hillary were to win the nomination, her opponent, obviously, won't be President Bush. So being to his right on immigration is of limited relevance.

Even Michelle Malkin totally misses the good in her statements.

I myself would never vote for Hillary. But the Republican establishment takes for granted at its peril the significant number of party faithful who may be sorely tempted to do so if the Bush betrayal at the border continues.

Yes, Michelle totally overlooks anything beneficial in the statmenets by the hated Hillary Clinton.

Rob over at Say Anything kinda gets where I'm headed with all of this in a backhanded compliment sort of way.

Its great that she’s giving this issue lip service, but would she follow through? I’m guessing no.

It's just so hard for people leaning to the right to say "Good job Hillary!". Well I'm saying now. I really, really welcome her statements. There are only a handful of people, Tom Tancredo and James Sensenbrenner, who take this is as serious. The rest just continue to blather on about how it's an impossible issue to handle and therefore we should just live with it via amnesty or some other lame excuse way of dealing with the problem.

While I probably would never vote for Hillary Clinton (imagine if she was running against Charlie Rangel as the Republican nominee *chortle*) the fact that she has dropped this issue wholeheartedly into the middle of these people who are taking a lame stance on it makes me smile. Just maybe these issue dodgers will actually look at the issue as a serious threat to their current positions and do something about it.

As most of the Citizens in this country want something to be done about illegal immigration there should be a big shout from the mountaintop that Hillary Clinton's comments do actually mirror the majority in this country. Whether we would vote for her or not the people who won't address it need to get off their butts and take a stance.

Thank You Hillary!

Now was that so hard to do?

Other Commentary:

PrestoPundit, California Soujourn, Parableman, The Cassandra Page,

Crossposted to The Command Post

Beltway Traffic Jammed

Ever been to a showtrial?

* The trackback links below are probably to people who are ripping me apart. Have at it!