Is This the End of Billary?

We're back in Blogland after a lengthy holiday hiatus.

But what better time to return than on the eve of the New Hampshire primary? The primary that could be the death rattle of the presidential candidacy of Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Smartest Woman in the World.

The MSM has been canonizing Hillary since Bush won his second term in 2004, happily vilifying the current president nonstop, all the better to pave the way for Hillary's coronation in 2009. But all the shilling in the world turns out to have not done much good for Hillary's wooden stump persona, made worse by her predictably evasive answers to nearly every question she's asked. Her mannekin-like visage and robotic respones frequently call to mind the refrain from the late Frank Zappa's satirical song, "Plastic People:"

A fine little girl She waits for me
She's as plastic as she can be
She paints her face With plastic goo
And wrecks her hair With some shampoo

Plastic people
Oh, baby, now you're such a drag

"I dunno...sometimes I just get tired
Of ya honey--it's...ah..your
Hair spray...or something..."

Plastic people
Oh, baby, now you're such a drag

Humor aside, it's entirely possible that, having effectively been ruled by two virtual, oligarchical dynasties since January, 1989, the electorate badly wants another bloodline by 2009. Robert Shrum, often wrong, has this one right:

The Clinton industry, encrusted with the beneficiaries and acolytes of the first and probably only Clinton presidency, has turned Hillary into a product whose sell-by date has passed.

Let's hope so. The Billmeister's do-nothing presidency allowed Al Qaeda to build its strength pretty much off the radar screen, even as the president redirected the Pentagon's money spigot toward beloved Democrat "social programs," leaving our military and security apparatus in a nearly fatally weakened condition. All we need is another 8 years of this.

We're not ready to bury Hillary yet. Stranger comebacks have happened. And frankly, she'd be an easier candidate for the Republicans to beat than the current Democrat frontrunner, Barack Obama, a cipher, or better, a tabula rasa if there ever was one. But her smug air of inevitability, backed by a fawning, hypocritical press, drew to an abrupt and unexpected close in the frozen tundra of Iowa last week. Perhaps folks in New Hampshire will finish her deconstruction tomorrow.