In her reintroduction speech on Roosevelt Island in New York last Saturday, Hillary Clinton hit all the boilerplate liberal Democrat notes: The New Deal, big government, soak the rich, evil Wall Street... you know the song because the music is from a familiar score.
Speaking of songs, Hillary Clinton made reference to The Beatles' "Yesterday" and tied it to the seemingly outdated ideas of the Republican Party. In light of what the country is facing, yesterday is looking increasingly better, particularly if one considers the foreign and domestic policies of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush (minus some of the tax increases).
While Hillary Clinton wants to channel The Beatles, there is another song called "Yesterday" that may not be as familiar, but better describes her failed policies, as well as those of President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry, who appear committed to an unverifiable nuclear deal with Iran.
Country singer Roy Clark sang this "Yesterday" song. Here are a few excerpts that might well be used to rebut Hillary Clinton:
"Seems the love I've known has always been
The most destructive kind
Yes, that's why now I feel so old
Before my time."
That could describe Clinton's relationship with her husband, but let's not go there again.
And then there's this: "The thousand dreams I dreamed, the splendid things I planned
I always built to last on weak and shifting sand."
Examples: Hillarycare, which was rejected by a Democratic Congress during her husband's first term, the absence of any significant legislation while she was a senator from New York, the failed "re-set" with Russia, Benghazi, Middle East policy, including the rise of ISIS, the hidden emails, the refusal, so far, to release her medical records, which might shed light on her fall and hospitalization while she was secretary of state. Need I go on?
Hillary Clinton succeeded as secretary of state in logging lots of airline miles at taxpayer expense, but no one seems to know what she actually accomplished. TV interviews of some of her supporters have produced no substantive answers to the question: "What has she done?"
Back to "Yesterday."
"I never stopped to think what life was all about
And every conversation I can now recall
Concerns itself with me and nothing else at all."
That seems fairly descriptive. It has always been about Hillary and Bill, hasn't it?
And then the quite sad last line of the song:
"There are so many songs in me that won't be sung,
I feel the bitter taste of tears upon my tongue.
The time has come for me to pay for
Yesterday when I was young."
That "pay" will come in next year's election if Republicans don't blow their opportunity by cowering in the face of the bogus "war on women" attack and retreat on social issues as the secular wing of the party continues to urge them to do.
We only learn from the past. We can't learn from the future because it hasn't arrived. But we can help shape the future by not repeating the mistakes of yesterday, focusing instead on those things that have a track record of working.
Democrats want to cling to yesterday's ideology, the one promoted by Franklin Roosevelt during different times. So who is really living in the past? All Hillary Clinton has to offer is bigger government, higher taxes, more spending on failed programs and a lax morality that has eaten away at the moral underpinnings of the nation.
To paraphrase FDR, the only thing we have to fear is Hillary Clinton, herself.
(Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com.)
