NY Observer: Pardongate Shame Should Force Hillary to Resign
"Had she any shame, she would resign."
With those words Wednesday morning, the New York Observer -- newspaper of record to Manhattan's intelligentsia -- became the first major publication to suggest that the corruption now coming to light in the Clintons' pardons-for-cash scandal makes it untenable for Hillary Rodham Clinton to continue serving as New York State's junior U.S. Senator.
"With the nation and indeed the world watching, we (New Yorkers) entrusted her with the U.S. Senate seat once held by Robert F. Kennedy and Daniel Patrick Moynihan," the Observer says in its scathing editorial this week.
"It is clear now that we have made a terrible mistake, for Hillary Rodham Clinton is unfit for elective office. Had she any shame, she would resign. If federal officeholders were subject to popular recall, she'd be thrown out of office by springtime, the season of renewal."
The paper warns that the Clintons are banking on the short memories of the electorate; that even now Bill and Hillary are plotting their return to respectability -- biding their time till the latest scandal blows over and they can return to power.
"Only two months ago, serious people believed that Mrs. Clinton would be a candidate for President in 2004." Now, says the Observer, even the Clintons' staunchest supporters must realize those hopes have been "relegated to history's dustbin."
But, the liberal weekly warns, "They have fooled the public before. They believe they can do so again.... And so it will be up to New York, finally, to foil the calculations of this coarse
footnote: Hillary's latest popularity poll is at a all time low of 22%, the same percentage Nixon had at the time of his resignation...
Eagler