http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0509,lombardi1,61604,6.htmlIf it's true that the Democratic Party is about to get religion, then Hillary Clinton is first at the altar. Much has been made of Clinton's newly softened image—the way she tore down her old liberal icon and got spiritual over abortion, for instance. She told an Albany crowd on January 24 that abortion represents "a sad, even tragic choice to many, many women," and singled out "religious and moral values" as an antidote to teenage sex. Never mind the New York junior senator's continued advice that pro-choice activists find "common ground" with their anti-abortion counterparts. Pundits chalked up the putative presidential candidate's remarks to a post-election Democratic shift to the center. After all, the only way to win national office anymore is to move to the middle, and these days that means getting serious about God and guns.
And sure enough, there she was, getting cozy with Republican maverick John McCain on NBC's Meet the Press last week, as he said she'd make "a good president." She played commander in chief, going out of her way to disagree with the hard-left wing of her own party by insisting that the troops must stay in Iraq to keep the insurgents at bay.
Yet for all the notice of Clinton's centrist tone and morality-speak on the national stage, her New York constituents largely missed the senator's real debut as a God-fearing Middle American. It came in a January 19 speech in Boston that made headlines there, with Clinton appearing in a Globe photograph alongside the host, Reverend Eugene Rivers III, one of the state's most outspoken opponents of same-sex marriage.