Senior Republicans: Hillary Clinton’s Best Friends

In “How to Beat Hillary Clinton,” BuzzFeed reviews several aspects of past campaigns against Hillary Clinton and how gleaned insights might help her next opponent, from capitalizing on “Hillary Hate” to being ready for a biased liberal media helping her when they can.

Of the eight bullet-pointed items, number four–“Don’t Count on Senior Republicans”–may be the most notable. If you doubt the charge that significant elements of the GOP are merely Democrat-lite, this section may help convince you of the reality.

According to BuzzFeed, Hillary Clinton “had done an effective, focused job of courting Republican allies. … Today, Clinton has a reserve of goodwill among a generation of Republican figures who can come as a surprise in the ultra-polarized world of national politics –and it’s something that she will surely deploy if she wins the Democratic nomination. Who better to repel a searing Republican attack than a respected Republican ally?”

While speculative in nature, and certainly the Bushes are Republicans, if Jeb Bush is denied the nomination, how far would they go to help defeat a Hillary Clinton, whose politics are in many ways more in line with theirs than any legitimately conservative Republican nominee? It may seem unfair to single out the Bush family here–and in some ways it is. Unfortunately, the broader point also applies. In the “ultra-polarized world of national politics,” it’s not always easy to tell D from R, much to the consternation of the Republican conservative base.

BuzzFeed states:

And the Clintons have assiduously, over the years, worked on a very high level with key Republicans–George W. Bush among them. (It’s interesting to think about where the Bushes will be if Jeb doesn’t get the nomination.)

Indeed, Clinton’s Republican Senate colleagues remember her fondly. And then there are people like conservative journalist Christopher Ruddy, a former leader of the anti-Hillary brigades. He recently pledged to donate $1 million to the Clinton Global Initiative.