Kirsten Gillibrand now says she never really believe in the 2nd Amendment.
Now that she’s being called out for her hypocrisy, the presidential hopeful is spinning the policy shift as a “simple mistake.” “I didn’t do the right thing,” Gillibrand told CNN‘s Alisyn Camerota on “New Day” Wednesday. “I mean, I think someone who can’t recognize when they’re wrong is far more concerning if you can never admit when you’re wrong. And not only was I wrong, and not only should I have cared more about gun violence in other parts of my state or other parts of my country, I just didn’t.”
It’s easy. When she was a Congresswoman from upstate New York, it was beneficial to her politically to be pro-gun. When she became Senator of New York, it was beneficial for her to be anti-gun. What politicians never want to admit is that their views are fungible depending on political expedience. It goes back to the old Groucho line: “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.â€
Even your favorite politician who tells you how much he loves the Second Amendment, in most cases, is telling you that because it’s politically expedient. Our great task is to make it politically expedient. There are true believers out there, but they are rare.
True but I also remember Schumer telling her that he was going to arrange to primary her if she didn’t fall into lines on guns. Unlike her, he does have principles and they are evil.
Schumer would “discover” the incredible benefits of the Second Amendment tomorrow if the electorate of New York suddenly transformed into the electorate of Wyoming. Senator is a nice gig, and keeping the job is priority one for them.
Gillibrand is a blank slate. She’ll say and do whatever her handlers tell her to do. Get her off-script and she’s completely lost – worse than Obama and Biden – she’ll either stutter and stumble or say amazingly dumb things.
I remember a quote from some politician in the past. “The first duty of any politician is to get re-elected.”
Every so often a politician can get away with doing something that’s wildly unpopular. But the politician can only do that under certain conditions:
(1) the politician has decided not to run for re-election, or has run into a term limit barrier,
(2) the politician has a lot of political capital, and knows that he can spend some of it on this particular issue, knowing that other issues valued by the electorate are enough to secure re-election,
(3) the issue at hand is of such great importance, it’s worth even burning re-election.
Of course, a lot of Blue Dog Democrats decided that ObamaCare was worth the sacrifice, but I’m not entirely convinced that Democrats have recovered from that particular issue. I can’t help but wonder if there are Blue Dogs who wish they voted against ObamaCare after all, and I can’t help but wonder if there are Democrats looking at the results of ObamaCare, and wondering “is the next politically charged issue so important, that I should go against my constituents?”
I have mixed feelings about expecting politicians to have as their first duty to be elected. On the one hand, this key principle means that politicians generally respect the will of the people. On the other hand….it means that politicians generally respect the will of the people….
Overall, though, in practice this means we need to do our darnedest to make sure that the general will of the people are educated enough that they reach the right positions on issues; I think that one of the greatest failings of many politicians is that they would rather do what they perceive to be the will of the people, than they would to put in effort to try to educate the people, and then convince the will to accept the right thing. Politicians who do the latter (such as Ronald Reagan) are a rare breed indeed!