Abuse of Process

Via memeorandum:

After all the shady things that the Clinton campaign has done in the last few weeks, this one has to be the most blatant: the campaign is now going to fight to have the Florida, and more appallingly, Michigan delegates seated at the party convention. Of course, Hillary won Michigan by default since Obama and Edwards removed their names from the ballot in order to play the part of the "good soldiers."

At this point, any knowledgeable person who still supports Hillary but complains about Bush/Cheney abuse of executive power is close to the pinnacle of hypocrisy. While technically speaking Hillary has no ability to force the convention to seat these delegates, that's not really the point. The bigger point is that the Clintons are demonstrating a complete disregard for the process to which they have agreed. While this is an election rather than a presidential exercise in decisionmaking, it provides a lot of insight into Clinton's views on process and especially the applicability of process to her. Which is to say that she thinks she's above it.

Unfortunately, as this commenter at Obsidian Wings (responding to another excellent post by hilzoy) shows, Clinton's die-hard supporters don't really have a problem with the Bush/Cheney way of doing things in principle. No, their real problem is with the fact that their side is currently out of power. Their view isn't that the problem is that the President has become too powerful. Instead, their view is that the problem is that they're not in control of the Presidency. This kind of rationale (that ends can justify means as long as they're your party's chosen ends) is a perfect example of, or at least a corollary to, Kip's Law.

Now that the Giuliani campaign is on life-support, I'm moving ever more firmly into the Anybody But Hillary camp - and that includes "Battlefield Earth" Romney.