NPR Interview with Clinton Emerges: ‘My Roots Are Conservative, I’m Proud I Was a Goldwater Girl’

[John Poet]

A 1996 NPR interview with Hillary Clinton has recently resurfaced, in which the current Democratic front-runner shockingly embraced conservatism and reiterated how proud she was to support a segregationist presidential candidate.

In the interview, Clinton told NPR’s Scott Simon that her political beliefs were “rooted in the conservatism that I was raised with,” and talked about being a “Goldwater girl” in 1964:

Read more:

http://usuncut.com/politics/npr-interview-hillary-clinton-was-proud-of-her-conservatism/

[cantbeserious]

1. Maintaining The Status Quo For Oligarchs, Corporations And Banks Is The Limit Of HRC's Vision

eom

[RobertEarl]

3. She is mired in it

She can't escape, it's who she is. Bernie, as we all know, has no blood on his hands.

[dchill]

30. Wallowing in it, more like.

[Armstead]

2. WAS a Goldwater Girl?

[SammyWinstonJack]

23. Still CONservative.

[tk2kewl]

37. sshhh... she doesn't want to let on

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511344671

Clinton co-sponsored the Workplace Religious Freedom Act; she didn't back off even after Republican senators such as Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter pulled their names from the bill citing concerns that the measure would protect those refusing to perform key aspects of their jobs—say, pharmacists who won't fill birth control prescriptions, or police officers who won't guard abortion clinics.

[John Poet]

48. YIKES!

I didn't remember that one.

[snagglepuss]

38. Yeah and there's a photo floating around of her in Goldwater gear. nt

[snagglepuss]

42. Yeah and there's a photo floating around of her in Goldwater gear. nt

[onehandle]

4. 52 years ago a teenage girl volunteered for her families party preference.

Years before she could vote.

Evil. EVIL!!!!

[Armstead]

8. AQjd in the 90's whejn itn was cool to be conservative she used it to prove her bona fides

I realize she added that the conservatives of the times were reactionaries.....But to her they were reactionalry against Democrats. Being a pro business reactionary was cool.

[Rhiannon12866]

11. When I was really little, my Dad let me go into the voting booth with him

He'd often let me pull some of the levers, though he told me which ones to pull. And I know very well how my Dad voted. So it's possible that I voted for Barry Goldwater!

[onehandle]

13. EVIL!!!

Not really.

[Rhiannon12866]

14. I know!!!

[Perogie]

18. I like you blinders.

They keep you from seeing the truth about Hillary. I wish I had a pair.

[LovingA2andMI]

24. Prefer to Have OPEN EYES Myself

Easier to see that way

[Loudestlib]

20. It's not just that.

Every time a tough problem has come up, she pulls right. Crime is up? Lock up more people. Need to get people off welfare? Kick them off. We are attacked? Let's go to war.

[ultragreen]

31. Meanwhile, 32 years later

Hillary Clinton stated that she was still proud to have been a Goldwater girl, and she was still proud of her conservative roots.

[Divernan]

40. BUT, her father ran as a Democrat; lost in primary(1.5% of vote).

Being the notoriously ill-tempered person that he was, he then became a Republican with a vengeance.

Rodham tried politics once, running for Chicago alderman as an independent in 1947; he lost badly to the Richard J. Daley political machine that he was hoping to ingratiate himself with.

http://www.geni.com/people/Hugh-Ellsworth-Rodham/6000000002768891239

While Hillary was still in the womb, her father, Hugh Rodham decided to run for alderman of the 49th Ward. The Rodhams lived in Edgewater, in an apartment at 5722 N. Winthrop Ave. Hugh, a draper who had migrated to the city from Pennsylvania, was an outsider to Chicago, so his campaign was crushed by the ward’s political machine machine. The Democratic committeeman, Frank Keenan, won the election easily, with 65 percent of the vote. Hugh finished fifth, tallying 382 votes -- a measly 1.5 percent of the vote. That was the end of his career in electoral politics -- and the beginning of his enmity toward Chicago’s Democratic machine.

Source: http://www.nbcchicago.com/blogs/ward-room/Hillary-Clinton-And-Chicago-Politics--215092781.html#ixzz41KxHu3VC
Follow us: @nbcchicago on Twitter | nbcchicago on Facebook

[markpkessinger]

58. My oldest sister is three years younger than Hillary . . .

. . . she was in the eighth grade when Goldwater ran, and, to her classmates, she supported Goldwater. She talks about that today not as something she is "proud of," but rather as something she recognizes as youthful error!

[liberal_at_heart]

5. Hillary supporters have been saying that she was just a teenager then. Well she

wasn't a teenager in 1996.

[LovingA2andMI]

25. They Will Find A Way...

To Twist, Shout and Spin that Fact. Watch.

[Chakab]

27. She wasn't even 50 years old at this time of this interview. Nobody fully grows into their

politics until at least the age of 60.

Cut her a break.

[Impedimentus]

46. Actually, they only become fully mature and wise at 74 !

Bernie 2016

[roguevalley]

6. consider this... everyone grows and maybe they did slag in their past that

Last edited Fri Feb 26, 2016, 10:56 PM - Edit history (1)

they regret or smirk over later. But this is her singing the joy of her heart in 1996. She wasn't a teenager. She's grown. This explains the super predator remark which is MASSIVELY right winged being so easy for her, her pursuit and hope to have a role oversighting the draconian welfare reform in the states and all the other shit. It sure tells me how she can sit next to the rotting corpse of Henry Kissinger on a beach every year when they vacation together. She is still that person who embraced 'Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice!' She is still the person who embraced Barry Goldwater in the past.

Interestingly enough, Goldwater evolved in his later years hating pretty much everything we all hate. Apparently Hillary didn't.

[dorkzilla]

19. + 1 billion

Even if I could move past other things...Kissinger. No.

[Optimism]

7. Good use of proper tense there Armstead!

I seriously don't know why this would in any way surprise anyone? Nice though to see confirmation.

Now if she'd only been an Eisenhower Girl instead, and continued to espouse his values and viewpoints, well there might then be a chance I'd back her.

Bernie ... Now More Than Ever!!

[SoLeftIAmRight]

9. I like it when she tells the truth.

...

[Snarkoleptic]

10. As they say, "you is what you is".

Nt

[Nyan]

12. Of course she is. For instance,

she only came out in support of gay marriage three years ago.
There's no reason to believe that she really believes in equal marriage. None.

[DirkGently]

15. Clinton describes herself as a "head conservative, heart liberal."

The reality is that Hillary Clinton is a conservative, full stop. She is not a member of the looney extremist mob that the American Republican Party has become, but at the end of the day, she finds conservative views compelling.

When pressed on matters of policy, she is hawkish on foreign policy, laissez-faire as to corporate regulation, "sad" about abortion, skeptical of the future of social programs, and supportive of heavy-handed law enforcement. She leavens that with a gradually evolving social progressivism (this is the "heart" one can assume).

That's fine. People can be conservative. Conservatism is a way some people think. Is it the way American Democrats, who generally say they want someone more progressive than Obama for President, think?

We shall see.

[mike45567]

16. Speaking of conservative

Bill put his own brother in the pen for coke while Arkansas guv.

[Divernan]

32. "Heart liberals" don't vote to sell/use cluster bombs; gut welfare for kids;

snort with delight at assassinations: "We came, we saw, he died! Snort! Snort!"

Or laugh at getting a 41 year old man she believed guilty of raping a 12 year old girl off on a technicality (DA's office lost the piece of the girl's panties which had tested positive to match the victim's blood and the semen/ DNA of Hill's client). When interviewed years later about it, she blatantly violated attorney client privilege by laughingly describing how her client had passed a lie detector test, and saying "That forever destroyed my confidence in polygraph tests."

Clinton’s client, a factory worker, was facing a 30-year prison sentence if convicted of luring the girl into his automobile, plying her with alcohol and sexually assaulting her. Instead, he was able to cop a plea, admitting to the unlawful fondling of a child, and ended up being sentenced to a year behind bars, with two months reduced for time served. His co-rapist and partner in crime had already pled guilty.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/conservatives-are-making-hay-out-of-hillary-clintons-defense-of-an-accused-rapist/2014/06/16/7d087efa-f576-11e3-a606-946fd632f9f1_story.html

The Clinton camp is brushing off newly released recordings from the mid-1980s that reveal Hillary Clinton laughing while discussing her successful legal defense of an accused child rapist who she believed was guilty.

The recordings are part of over five hours of taped interviews Arkansas reporter Roy Reed conducted with Bill and Hillary Clinton between 1983 and 1987. On the tape, the then-first lady of Arkansas candidly discusses the most significant criminal case of her legal career: her defense of a 41-year-old man accused of raping a 12-year-old girl in 1975.

Clinton suggests on the tape that she believed her client was guilty. She can also be heard laughing at several points when discussing the prosecution’s accidental destruction of crucial DNA evidence and her use of this mistake to secure a very favorable plea bargain for her client.

However, the recordings drew criticism from segments of the legal and media worlds. Defense attorney Gerald Shargel called the tapes ethically troubling in an interview with the Daily Beast. “It is in bad taste,” said Shargel. “A lawyer has an obligation to do no harm to a client and that obligation continues after the disposition of the case. To destroy the guy in the court of public opinion may run afoul of [legal ethics]. Finally, laughing about a client who got away with it? The better discretion suggests you say nothing.”

GQ political correspondent Lisa DePaulo called the recording “beyond disturbing,” the Daily Beast reported, and former Washington Post reporter Ruben Castaneda said it appeared Clinton was “laughing about how clever she was as a defense attorney.”

Clinton was able to secure a plea bargain for her client, 41-year-old Thomas Alfred Taylor, which reduced his charges from rape in the first degree to fondling a child. He served less than one year in prison, despite initially facing 30-years to life for the rape charges. Clinton filed court documents, saying the 12-year-old victim appeared to have had a history of seeking out older men and romanticizing relationships.

Clinton said in the tapes that her client’s ability to pass a lie detector test while denying the rape “forever destroyed my faith in polygraphs.” She also laughed when discussing how the prosecution lost custody of DNA evidence that was central to the case against her client.

Washington Post reporter Melinda Henneberger wrote that Clinton’s “glee is audible about the prosecution’s big mistake in the case, when it accidentally discarded key evidence. Some are writing off the remarks, as one fellow journalist put it on social media, as ‘typical gonzo defense lawyer talk.’” “It is not, however, typical talk for a lifelong defender of women and children,” Henneberger added.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/16/why-was-hillary-clinton-laughing-about-helping-suspected-child-rapist.html

[Divernan]

34. The victim attempted suicide a year later.

(Continued from above)

I never sought out older men,’’ the adult victim told Newsday in 2008. She said she had never before accused anyone of assault. “I was raped,” she told Thrush, in an attack that she felt had contributed to a suicide attempt about a year later and to decades of depression and other problems.

http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/when-hillary-clinton-trashed-12-year-old-rape-victim
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/06/hillary-clinton-1975-arkansas-rape-victim-speaks-108124

Newsday interviewed the victim six years ago for their 2008 story. In it, the victim described how she had three decades of severe depression and other personal problems following the assault, and disputed claims that Clinton had once made in court against her. "It's not true, I never sought out older men. I was raped," the woman said.

The victim, with re-opened wounds, gave an angrier account to the Daily Beast in her recent interview: "When I heard that tape I was pretty upset," she said in the interview published today. "I went back to the room and was talking to my two cousins and I cried a little bit. I ain't gonna lie, some of this has got me pretty down. But I thought to myself, 'I'm going to stand up to her. I'm going to stand up for what I've got to stand up for, you know?"

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2014/06/hillary-clinton-dogged-by-1975-rape-case/

Nor was Clinton’s defense plan, mapped out in a court affidavit. In it, she questioned the credibility of the victim and suggested that the sixth-grader, who an ER doctor said showed injuries consistent with rape, had “a tendency to seek out older men.”

“I have been informed that the complainant is emotionally unstable,’’ Clinton wrote in the affidavit, “with a tendency to seek out older men and to engage in fantasizing.” The document, filed with the Washington County, Arkansas court on July 28, 1975, argued for a psychiatric evaluation for the victim.

“I have also been informed that she has in the past made false accusations about persons, claiming they had attacked her body,’’ Clinton wrote. “Also that she exhibits an unusual stubbornness and temper when she does not get her way.”

The “little bit nutty, little bit slutty’’ defense has a long, ugly history. It’s jarring to see it trotted out against a kid by a future feminist icon. The argument also bears an uncomfortable similitary to Clinton White House descriptions of Monica Lewinsky, who without that semen stain on her little blue dress would have been dismissed as a stalker who had fantasized that she had a relationship with President Bill Clinton.

In the end, Hillary Clinton didn’t have to go after the 12-year-old victim’s character because the prosecution accidentally discarded part of Taylor’s bloody, semen-stained underwear.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/conservatives-are-making-hay-out-of-hillary-clintons-defense-of-an-accused-rapist/2014/06/16/7d087efa-f576-11e3-a606-946fd632f9f1_story.html

[jalan48]

17. No one I know who lived in the 60's was proud to be a Goldwater girl in the 90's.

[LovingA2andMI]

21. Oh Shit....

[Chan790]

22. I already knew that Hillary was a stealth Republican being propped-up by ersatz Democrats.

It's nice to have confirmation though...now can we purge Hillary, Bill and their supporters from the Democratic party?

Please, for the love of Santa, what the fuck will it take for us to be allowed to expel her fake Democratic ass from the party and this primary?

[SammyWinstonJack]

28. I don't know, but I wish something would expel her from this primary before she takes us down with

her.

[kgnu_fan]

26. K&R

[jtuck004]

29. "You don't change hearts..." n/t

[Chasstev365]

33. Knew it!

You can take the girl out of Park Ridge, IL but you can"t take Park Ridge out of the of the girl!

[valerief]

35. But she was just a 50-year-old back then!

[tk2kewl]

36. lol

did you get that a serious excuse too?

[Feeling the Bern]

39. But because she is a Democrat now, all if forgiven. HRC fans seem to love conservatives

Especially ones that run as Democrats.

[SoapBox]

41. Whatever she is...I want none of it.

No More Clintons.

[AzDar]

43. Lie, Cheat and Steal... Clinton Family Values

[HooptieWagon]

44. She's always been a conservative.

She just changed an (R) to a (D) and collected Koch money to hijack the party.

[autonomous]

45. Democrats: oh look a gift shaped like a wooden horse!

Look at it give such pretty speeches, like Reagan!

[progree]

47. Such a chameleon. Here she is in a 1979 interview pandering by heaping scorn on urban America

From "The Nation" 9/14/15

A cover article on Hillary Clinton. It starts off with a 1979 Television interview (that Buzzfeed recently uncovered) with Hillary Rodham (she didn't take the Clinton name until later, under pressure) who had just become the first lady of Arkansas.

The interviewer asked what she found attractive about Arkansas.

Outsiders, he noted, complain that "We're so unprogressive here. We're just not as progressive as they are up North."

Appearing eager to finally ingratiate herself, she replies by pouring scorn on urban America:

[font color = blue]"You know, if it's progress to default on your bond obligations so that your city's going into bankruptcy, or if it's progress to have such an incredible crime rate that people don't venture outside their doors, or if it's progress to live in a city whose air you can't breathe, well, then, I hope we are unprogressive, and I hope we never get to the point where that's our definition of progress." [/font]

This exchange exemplifies a dynamic we would observe over and over for more than 2 decades -- that when her reputation as a leftist and feminist threatened the viability of her husband's political career, she had a tendency to overcorrect.

The full interview (both text and video) is at http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/hillary-clinton-1979
The segment discussed above begins at 21:13

[Octafish]

49. People can evolve.

Look how much she's done for liberal causes since then.

[HereSince1628]

50. Lawyers by training and character are capable of advocating at will.

Criminal justice, and common decency, demand that even obvious criminals get the benefit of an attorney charged to make the best defense that can be made. Of course, lawyers do what they see as work, to promote their self-interest.

That same model is at work in politics. Where you can find a large class of politicians who behave similarly. They know that government demands the presence of politicians and they take on the work while promoting their self-interests.

It's generally pretty easy to find such people who from very modest beginnings, and long lives doing little other than politics become rather luxuriously, if not fabulously, wealthy.

Such people are vulnerable to influence of clients, with better paying clients frequently having more influence.

People need to be very careful about what they think of and accept as evolution. Change that is apparent can just be involvement in causes that promote personal interest.

The trajectory of the evolving that takes place can suggest that the selection pressure at work is forcing a general arc toward fame and wealth.

[Octafish]

53. ''You gotta go along to get along.''

I had hoped back in 1992 that the good people who put people ahead of profit and property would return to the White House. I must have missed Corporate McPravda bring up...

EXCERPT...

As Governor of Arkansas Bill Clinton chaired the Democratic Leadership Council from 1990 through 1991, and courting corporate America served him exceedingly well. Supported by $11.17 million in campaign contributions from Wall Street Mr. Clinton became the first DLC president in 1993. Hillary Clinton was at his side, a de facto minister-without-portfolio.

This was the “New Democratic Party,” President Clinton said, and he soon demonstrated how far to the right he would move its agenda.

Claiming “the era of big government is over,” President Clinton promised to “end welfare as we know it.” And he did, by signing the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. The law bore severely on low income families, disproportionately communities of color. Clinton took pride also in the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which led eventually to an explosion of incarceration, and spawned an industry of private, for-profit prisons. Once again the law impacted most heavily the black and Latino communities.

Then it was time to favor corporate America.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/02/26/the-clintons-and-wall-street-24-years-of-enriching-each-other/

[/div

If Ms. Clinton is the nominee, I will do all I can to help elect her -- with the hope she has changed as promised.

[HereSince1628]

55. Big gov't never ended, the kulak politicians just sent the big benefits to oligarchs

I for one am entirely ok with failure as a possibility. Political failure demands change. Consequently, the risk of failure is what makes politics responsive.

That's not just me talking, it's a big part of the New Dem/Third-way/DLC creation myth.

Denying the New Dems, or any political clique, the possibility of failure actually has the effect of guaranteeing that there will be no change to deal with that failure.

It's one of the terrible dilemmas presented by the capture of the democratic party by politicians who for personal gain are ok serving the oligarchs.

I can't make any claims to know the inner thoughts of any politician, so I won't.

But political scientists have done the research that documents the general result...w[div class="

hat general citizens want doesn't happen, what the wealthy want happens.

There is no accident of random mutation or increased natural fittness in that, it's entirely a consequence of the artificial selection and cultivation of kulaks by the oligarchs.

[Thinkingabout]

51. She is not denying she as a very young girl was a Goldwater supporter, what is the problem?

Goldwater ran in 1964, the first presidential election Hillary could participate was 1968. She never ran as a Liberty Union candidate and she has been a Democrat for almost 50 years. She did not change her party listing in the last year.

[Buzz Clik]

52. Because I voted for Nixon when I was 18 ...

... and Reagan some years later, I guess this doesn't bother me much.

I have not voted Republican since 1980, nor will I ever buy into their bullshit again.

People change.

[Vogon_Glory]

54. These Threads Remind Me Of Right_Wing Whacko-Bird Purity Tests

These threads remind me of right-wing whacko-bird political purity contests where the right-wing reactionaries fall all over themselves to prove that they were NEVER moderate, NEVER pro-choice, and NEVER, EVER pro-Democrat, even if many of the ones over fifty had been right-wing Dixiecrats back in the day.

Our party, unlike Club Pachyderm, is a party of evolution and change, not stasis buttressed by religious bigotry and racism. Ours is a party where voters as well as candidates move beyond the reactionary beliefs we brought in with us.

A LOT of Democrats are wised-up Republicans and even wised-up ex-conservatives.

These on-line political auto-da-fe s benefit nobody but the McConnells, the Cruzes, the Trumps, and the Koch brothers.

[MBS]

57. Thank you.

The relevant questions are: what has the candidate learned since then? What is his/her record since then? What is important to him/her now?

One-issue litmus tests/purity tests are not a helpful way to choose candidates.

[Babel_17]

56. Who could have imagined the party would move away from that? ;)

Her meaning can be explained, but good luck getting an audience to sit still for it, or condensing that narrative down to a length that's both compelling and brief.

Edit: P.S. Remember to like it at youtube.