Clintonistas for McCain

Washington Wire reports that Carly Fiorina is meeting with Clinton supporters in an attempt to win support for John McCain. The question is what issues they have in common. From my perspective, Clinton’s conservative views on civil liberties and social issues (other than abortion) in many ways do place her closer to McCain than Obama in ideology. She even has closer ties to the religious right than McCain, other than for McCain’s willingness to pander to them on abortion.

While there are considerable differences between Clinton and Obama on issues, these differences are rarely what motivated most people to back Clinton. I don’t think many people backed Clinton specifically because they agree with her opposition to banning cluster bombs or agree with her support for banning flag burning. I just have not seen many Clintonistas push for Clinton because of her crusades against video games and cartoon sex.

Amy Siskind organized the meeting and gives some clues as to what issues they were interested in:

Siskind said Fiorina agreed to provide details regarding McCain’s stances on mandating health insurance coverage for birth control pills, federal mandates for paid maternity leave and a reinvigoration of federal legislation aimed at giving women equal pay for comparable work.

Woman’s isssues apparently dominated the talks. If this is what the Clinton supporters are interested in, the qualifications I added to the first paragraph sure do matter. While her views and tactics often are at odds with liberalism, Clinton and her supporters are clearly supporters of abortion rights, and therefore fall much closer in some areas to Obama than McCain. How many Clinton supporters really are willing to return to the days of shirt hanger abortions, even if McCain compromises with them on coverage for birth control pills and paid maternity leave?

3 Comments

  1. 1
    PolticalWorld says:

    “Siskind said Fiorina agreed to provide details regarding McCain’s stances on mandating health insurance coverage for birth control pills, federal mandates for paid maternity leave and a reinvigoration of federal legislation aimed at giving women equal pay for comparable work.”

    Mccain doesn’t have a position on mandating health care, who is she pandering to?  Carly is the one who went on the morning cable shows and said ” gas prices have no effect on the economy” What kind of economic adviser is that?

  2. 2
    Ron Chusid says:

    They are referring to mandates with regards to what insurance companies are required to cover (assuming someone has insurance), not mandates on having health care as Clinton advocated.

  3. 3
    Mandy says:

    You forget that women are not wholly rational creatures!

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