Hillary in 2012? The Clintons and secession

“Hillary vs Obama in 2012?” asks Charlie Speight, the perceptive South Carolina blogger at The Garnet Spy who brought Nikki Haley to national attention. Pete DuPont said last week in the WSJ she could mount a formidable challenge to Obama. Have always felt she would bring a challenge. The Clintons can't help themselves. But it will fail, as Ted Kennedy's challenge to Jimmy Carter failed. It will weaken Obama and he will lose in 2012.

The power model we are on now parallels that of the late ’70s, early ’80s. Obama, like Carter, is prelude to a strong long-term conservative run featuring Palin, Romney or Rick Perry and possibly Jon Huntsman Jr. I believe we are at a Jacksonian transition; heartland will rise up and leave the Beltway mediocrities — both parties — behind as it did in the 1830s. Thus Palin. But an attempted Clinton restoration will foster new secession movements.

Bill Clinton’s presidency (or priesthood) advanced the two original American secession movements of our time, The League of the South and the New England Confederation, both of which were supported by academics of major universities like Emory and Duke. The New England Confederation retired itself when George W. Bush came into office. It then morphed into the Second Vermont Republic and found original support from George Kennan and John Kenneth Galbraith. This year it fields 10 certified and credible candidates for state offices. Bumper stickers that read, “Vermont, first to secede” are now common up here. Since February 2009, when New Hampshire state Rep. Dan Itsey proposed a state sovereignty resolution against the Obama bailouts based on Jefferson’s Kentucky Resolutions, more than 30 state sovereignty and 10th Amendment movements have advanced across the country. The cat is out of the bag. Secession today — to paraphrase H. Rap Brown — is as American as apple pie. If Hillary is elected president the Southwest will secede.

(Reader caution: Compound sentences ahead.) What the Clintons brought was a change in cultural temperament. I’ve spoken to most of the leaders, including lawyers and academics from the original separatist movements, and felt that the Clintons’ character; their seeing themselves as globalist god kings — cult figures; and their generation supporting this brought a rejection of them similar to that of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 in England, which formed England’s future character. The Clinton culture was primarily a generational priesthood. A normal mortal like Obama following, no matter how stylish, doesn’t have a chance. But Clintonism will be repudiated if Hillary runs in 2012.

Bill Clinton was correct in his observation that “The age of big government is over.” What is most significant about our times is that the dialogue between Keynes and Marx, which expanded the world for more than 100 years, has changed to a dialogue between Keynes and Hayek. Politics of small government, meaning state and regional control, will inevitably follow, possibly for another hundred years. In this regard the Obama presidency, which hails back to Roosevelt, is a historic anomaly. He forms the background for a new political age he will not be part of. Nor will Bill and Hillary be part of it.

Visit Mr. Quigley's website at http://quigleyblog.blogspot.com.