Customer Reviews

The Extreme Makeover of Hillary (Rodham) Clinton

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

I am a lifelong Democrat with quiet misgivings about this year's race (and a native New Yorker a little--not hugely--unsettled that an Illinois native, by way of Arkansas and D.C., has ended up our senator). I was prepared for Ms. Buchanan's conclusions. However, I was unprepared for the depth and integrity of her research. This is a soundly written book. It's a sobering, even a frightening, assessment of the practices, policies, rhetoric, and cronyism we might face if we elected the person who emerges from these pages. I urge people to read this book before deciding whom to support as a Democratic candidate. It has rattled me sufficiently that the decision has become a matter of conscience.

Bay Buchanan does an incredible job in gathering the speeches, talks, conversations, radio/TV appearances and other sources where Hillary expounds on everything from the war in Iraq, weapons of mass destruction to abortion and "It Takes a Village." She also interviews both friends of Ms. Clinton's and other Democrats as well. Ms. Buchanan then compiles all this information both past and present to present a picture of both where Senator Clinton stands on the issues and where her advisors (for good or ill) have told her to stand.

Reading this book may not convince you either way on voting for Senator Clinton for President in 2008, but it should give you insight into her true positions on such issues as education, abortion, the military, feminism, taxes and economics to name a few.

A very informative book for votes in any political party. Highly recommended!

Bay Buchanan, the younger sister of Pat Buchanan and former Treasurer of the United States, offers up some unique bulbs of observation amidst a larger garden of perennial wisdom. She updates the earlier tomes with an exploration of Mrs. Clinton's time in the Senate and provides a central theme that is both compelling and persuasive. Her idee fixe is that character is a monumental aspect of leadership and that Hillary Clinton is entirely devoid of it.

The Extreme Makeover illustrates Hillary's unfamiliarity with the virtue of responsibility, and that she is every bit as prolific and stunning a liar as her husband. Buchanan traces the scandals integral to Mrs. Clinton's existence and finds one element common with them all: she could have mitigated the damage in practically every instance had she admitted the truth from the outset. This was trued of her venture into cattle futures, the Whitewater fiasco, Travelgate, her collection of FBI records on "perceived enemies," and the Grand White House Looting scheme of 2001. Yet, self-admission is not something of which Hillary has ever been capable--she would prefer to blame others. The author describes her as a card-carrying member of "the National Association of Victimhood." It may take several decades to document all the mistruths inherent to a second Clinton administration...and by then, in the words of Christopher Hitchens, they'll be no one left to lie to.

Apart from style, The Extreme Makeover succeeds in warning readers of what a Hillary Clinton presidency will look like, and, more precisely, who it will target. A made over person is exactly the Hillary we see lecturing us on CNN and CBS. The real would-be queen is simply not fit for widespread consumption. The junior senator's personality revolves around a lust for power, a need to control others, and rampant insecurity. Anger and irritability are natural attributes, and but only her family, advisors, and the secret service are allowed to observe them. Mrs. Clinton's inner core is so volatile and brittle that not even a massive team of handlers and PR specialists have managed to infuse her with charisma or charm. The outcome of this bizarre makeover is a bionic mask of Lancôme and ritzy apparel cloaking the radical within, but one that ultimately renders her artificial, robotic, heartless, calculating, and inhuman. What better words could describe the buffoonish behavior she paraded in Selma, Alabama when she tried on a southern accent as if it were a new pantsuit from Bloomingdales?

Is Hillary Clinton a Trojan Horse? Frankly, I doubt it. As a charlatan she is rather primitive. It's hard to imagine her true character remaining hidden over the course of the next year-and-a-half. Her advisors will have to apply so many swats of subterfuge to the palette of her personality that she'll more resemble a Jackson Pollock canvas than an actual person. Besides, admissions like "We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good" don't play well before non-Broadway audiences.

The only reason I didn't give Buchanan's book five stars is because what she did was really nothing more than point out the history of Hillary Clinton. She simply reminds us of Hillary's track record, though Ms. Buchanan does so in a very entertaining fashion. There is nothing that could possibly be challenged in the book: It's all a matter of record. I encourage anyone who is terrified of the possibility of a President Hillary Clinton, or anyone who would love for her to become President, to read this book. The former will find they are justified. The latter may realize what a huge mistake they are making.

The Extreme Makeover - - another "state of emergency" - - if it should prove successful

I have written about the threat from the ultra liberals and far lefters before. This has included substantial effort focused on our former VP (see all my reviews). And I have written about the writings of Bay Buchanan's brother, Patrick and his book State of Emergency. Perhaps it is a bit coincidental, but Bay's new book: The Extreme Makeover, is also about a "state of emergency", namely the situation we would face if Hillary Clinton were elected President. Bay Buchanan warns the American electorate that if they don't do their homework, on who Hillary Clinton really is, that the "consequences of doing less are too grave to consider."

Bay Buchanan doesn't waste much time on telling her readers where she stands. Examples:
* the front book flap tells us that Hillary "has always been in her adult life a dedicated, unapologetic liberal."
* And the back book cover quotes Kate O'Beirne: "In her indispensable exposé, Bay Buchanan reveals Hillary Clinton in her natural state--and its not pretty. Buchanan strips away Clinton's moderate makeover and reveals a left-wing record that can't be disguised."
* Back to the front book flap. "As Buchanan makes clear, not only can Hillary not be trusted, but her `makeover' is exactly what one would expect from an unprincipled left-wing politician."

Hillary's record includes a 2004 speech: "It's time to put the common good - - - ahead of individuals."
"Hillary's view of government is simple. "It is to remold society. It can do so by coercion, as in the case of health care; by indoctrination, as in the case of education; or by redistributing the wealth through tax and spend policies." It is pure unadulterated socialism, the type that is forced upon people by their government." In fact the theme from one of Hillary Clinton's earlier books: It Takes a Village, is about as orthodox communistic as one can get

Since her hubby first eyed the Whitehouse Hillary Clinton's attitude and ideology had made her a fly in the ointment to many conservatives. Her possible ascension from First Lady to commander in Chief has made many recoil. As Clinton nears closer to the whitehouse, more and more books critical of her politics and personality have come out. Bay Buchanan's Extreme Makeover is without a doubt the best of the pack.

As the title suggests, the theme of the book is to expose the many attempts of Hillary to remake herself. Buchanan goes far beyond the "flip flop" charge leveled against John Kerry in 2004. Buchanan looks at Hillary's constant change in image when it comes to politics, votes, and even appearance. In this she chronicles Hillary's unsavory personality, far left ideology and voting record, and her involvement in a number of scandals going back decades.

When I first heard Buchanan was writing this book, I asked myself "do we need another anti-Hillary tract?" We did, but with after reading this book, you won't need to read anymore.

Of course the Pro-Hillary crowd will decry this book as another Hillary basher and say that it only dredges up old material that everyone is tired of hearing. Their goal is to keep you from reading the book and seeing behind the carefully cultivated image the Hillary machine has created to help her run for the Presidency. The title refers to the fact that Hillary has always been a very liberal person (read the speech included at the back of the book from 1969 at Wellesley). If she ever really was a Goldwater Girl, it was briefly. She was (and is) more a Saul Alinksy Girl than she ever was a conservative of any stripe.

Besides the old scandals are mostly relegated to the first few chapters. They deserve being covered again to remind us of who she really is, how she has behaved in the past, and what her moral grounding actually is. Her media engines will be running at maximum RPMS to keep us from taking any look at these again. They will say it is ancient history, that they have been thoroughly investigated, and after so much energy and money was wasted they were all found to be baseless. This is untrue. Bay Buchanan does a great job using Hillary's words in "Living History" along with public documents and statements to analyze what really happened those years ago and it isn't favorable to Mrs. Clinton.

The rest of the book shines a light on the complex repositioning she is trying to accomplish on the War in Iraq, her stands on illegal immigration, her extreme views on feminism and abortion, her collectivist views on healthcare (Hillarycare has been promised a comeback if her ambitions are realized) - education (including taxing Americans to provide education to the nations all around the globe) - and her consistently liberal voting record despite her rhetorical flourishes.

I quote a bit from the author about Hillary and the present War in Iraq. In 2007, Hillary said, "If I had been President in October of 2002 I would never have asked for authority to divert our attention from Afghanistan to Iraq, and I certainly would never have started this war." This despite her statements from the Senate floor at the time we went to war, including, "So it is with conviction that I support this resolution as being in the best interests of our nation. A vote for it is not a vote to rush to war; it is a vote that puts awesome responsibility in the hands of our president and we say to him: use these powers wisely and as a last resport. And it is a vote that says clearly to Saddam Hussein: this is your last chance - disarm or be disarmed."

Buchanan notes on page 106, "Hillary is remarkable - she is unrestrained by any previous position she has ever taken. She wakes up every morning with a completely clean slate. So which is it - was the nation rushed into war or not? And why if she were president in 2002 would she never have asked for this vote if, as she said in 2002, it was "in the best interests of our nation"? And why in 2002 did she vote to give the president authority to go to war if, as she now says, she had been the president at the time she wouldn't have asked for the authority and certainly wouldn't have started this war? Is she saying she would have opposed herself?" Excellent!

In the chapter on Hillary as a "Stepford Candidate" Buchanan discusses how Hillary is so packaged she loses any authenticity as a candidate. She also notes how the Obama candidacy has thrown off the pacing and packaging that had been created to allow Hillary to appear more conservative since the Democrat nomination was supposed to be hers by all but acclimation. I think it is a good and informative analysis by someone who knows what presidential campaigns are really about.

Buchanan concludes with 12 questions she would like asked of Hillary and provide not only the Wellesley speech from 1969, but also excerpts from the Liz Carpenter Lectury Hillary gave in April 1993 and excerpts from her speech at the American University in Cairo in March 1999.

With so many millions being spent packaging the image the public has of Hillary and the free support she gets from the mainstream media, this book provides a current and valuable reminder of who Hillary actually is and what it is she is trying to foist onto the public.

This is one fantastic book. God forbid, that this woman ever become president of The United States of America. She is bad news from the word go. She has one agenda. To promote herself and her leftist ideas. We have already observed what one Clinton accompished while President. I have read several books about Hillary Clinton. Everyone of them basically tells the same story. Wake up America before it is too late.

Over the years, many authors have done important work shining bright lights on various aspects of Hillary Clinton, her past, her motives, her values, and her character. Barbara Olson and Bob Tyrrell are particularly noteworthy in this area. What Bay Buchanan has done is carry their reasoning forward to produce one thing I haven't seen enough of so far: a fairly convincing analysis of Hillary's years in the US Senate and her re-emergence as a moderate centrist (the "extreme makeover" of Buchanan's title).

Like I think many people, I had always assumed Hillary's alleged "move to the center" was a carefully-crafted ruse, part of her decades-old quest for power. That may be true as far as it goes, but Buchanan here paints a much more subtle scenario -- and one that raises more troubling questions about Hillary as a person. Hillary Clinton, Buchanan argues, "has no vision" (p. 15). While she is a master of details and a skillful mirror of others' ideas and rhetoric, she fundamentally lacks the ability to draw her own decisions, trust her own judgment, or show any real leadership. This is why, Buchanan says, Hillary has veered wildly from one "guru" or "expert" or "trusted advisor" to another over the years. Buchanan notes that HRC herself has commented "it's hard to stay where you are" in politics (p. 127) ... unless, of course, you're a person who has some core beliefs.

Hillary Clinton may once have been what I assumed she still was: what Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn described as a "Christian social romantic." But not, Buchanan says, any more. "[T]he idealism that once had a proud claim on her heart seems all but gone. The same is true of the many causes that once defined her. They have been replaced, for the most part, by a single, all-important one: herself" (p. 79).

All that remains, it seems, are her personal quest for power (driven, the author says, by HRC's belief that others are as badly in need of guidance as she herself is, and that therefore we must all be marshaled by government "experts" who know what's best for us) and her knee-jerk habit of responding to any criticism or opposition with heavy-handed political pressure or venomous personal attack.

As Hillary continues her ascent "on wings of deceit" (p. 201), her defenders will no doubt find it easier to ignore Bay Buchanan's critique or launch personal attacks than to convince us that the insights in this book are fundamentally unsound. But as the author notes, even many of Hillary's erstwhile supporters on the Left have lost patience with her. Bay Buchanan makes some observations that definitely deserve rational discussion and debate. Too bad that's so unlikely to happen these days.

In the Extreme Makeover of Hillary Clinton, Bay Buchanan shows that
contrary to claims of Hillary's moderation, she has been a consistent
left liberal for her entire career.

Most criticisms of Hillary Clinton focus only solely on her loathsome
personality and scandal filled career. Sometimes they may make some
neocon policy complaints about Iraq. This book explores new ground.

It does not ignore Hillary's shortcomings in these areas, but documents
Hillary's un-American positions from a genuinely conservative
perspective. Buchanan exposes Clinton's support for open borders,
multiculturalism, feminism, liberal interventionism, and a activist
big government.

Sometimes I think there are too many "Hillary Books," but reading this
one makes me realize we need them.