A wave of new books about Hillary Clinton casts tinder into the ongoing flames of discomfort with the New York Senator and Democratic presidential candidate.
You might suspect that damaging books about Hillary, right when the presidential campaign is getting underway, might be politically inspired. But Bay Buchanan's is the only one by a conservative author. Of the other two freshly out, one is by two New York Times reporters, and the other by Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame.
According to the reviews, we have here material to confirm a sense of this woman that already turns so many off. Cold, ruthless, manipulative, dishonest. And, for the more ideologically inclined, Buchanan's portrayal reveals a hard core left winger dressed up as a moderate for public consumption.
But, look, this is a free country and Americans are an open and forgiving people.
The issue is who is a person -- a candidate -- today. And the fact is that candidate Clinton is quite forthcoming about who she is. It's what I see and hear today that turns me and so many others so profoundly off.
Abortion, for example, is by no means a black and white partisan issue. Current law, Roe V. Wade, that permits abortion, is supported by barely more than half the country. Seventy percent of those polled say that partial birth abortion, the late-term destruction of the infant, should be illegal.
Seventeen Democratic Senators voted for the Partial Birth Abortion Act, which bans this procedure, except when the mother's life is in danger.
However, Hillary voted against it, and she condemned the Supreme Court's recent decision upholding the constitutionality of the Act.
This despite ongoing rhetoric from candidate Hillary about the importance of family and her abhorrence about the destruction of life. Yeah, right.
If you want to know about how Senator Clinton feels about freedom and her confidence that Americans, when acting without government in their face, are a productive and charitable people you, again, just have to listen to her.
The Senator was in true form the other day, speaking at a vocational school in New Hampshire.
"Fairness doesn't just happen. It requires the right government policies."
I don't think that Senator Clinton really got the message when the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union collapsed.
Other than making sure that women can destroy their unborn babies, including teenage girls doing so without permission from their parents, I don't think there is any part of our lives that Senator Clinton doesn't want to get government, her government, into.
Not only does she oppose freeing up those broken government systems that are failing Americans (our inner city public schools, our social security system, Medicare, Medicaid), but Senator Clinton's answer is more government.
When I stand in the security lines in the airport, I think about what it will be like in the health clinics in the era of Hillary Care.
Senator Clinton went on in New Hampshire to mock President Bush's "ownership society" idea, calling it the "own your own" society. Her ideal, she says, is the "we're all in it together" society.
This woman really hates freedom and has little appreciation that an ownership society and a "we're all in it together society" go hand in hand.
This was graphically shown in a book published last year, "Who Really Cares," by Professor Arthur Brooks of Syracuse University.
Professor Brooks studied in depth charitable giving patterns in America. His conclusions: religious Americans give four times as much as secular Americans, conservative households give 30 percent more than liberal households, and those who believe that government should redistribute income give one-fourth as much as those who do not believe this.
"We're all in it together America" is alive and well. I see it regularly as I travel around the country and speak in churches, at shelters, and in crisis pregnancy centers.
The point is that, as Professor Brooks' data bears out, Americans who care about their neighbors, who see their country and their lives as more than just about themselves, are the faithful, freedom loving Americans who believe in ownership and private property.
It's no wonder that Senator Clinton is not aware that this America exists. It's not where she hangs out.
The Clinton campaign is, not surprisingly, dismissing the new books about their candidate as ho-hum, and not bringing any new information to the table.
And I think they must be right. Americans are getting a pretty good sense of this woman just by listening to her.
Senator Clinton's negative ratings have been rising since her campaign began. Before she started, she logged in at 58 percent positive and 40 percent negative according to Gallup.
In the most recent Gallup poll, she came in at 45 percent positive and 51 percent negative.
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