This is a rush transcript from “Hannity & Colmes,” July 30, 2007. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
SEAN HANNITY, CO-HOST: After getting jeered for the second year in a row at the Take Back America conference last month, Hillary Clinton got another rude welcoming this past weekend when she addressed a gathering of the Young Democrats for America.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. HILLARY CLINTON (D), NEW YORK: … $50 billion to do this, renewable, clean, alternative energy. And then let’s make sure we put it…
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: And, meanwhile, the sparks are still flying between Camp Hillary and Camp Obama. The back-and-forth over who has the leadership to lead the nation is the first evidence of a serious schism between the Democratic frontrunners.
And joining us now is Bay Buchanan, author of the book “The Extreme Makeover of Hillary Clinton,” and from the Young Democrats for America, Alexandra Acker. She was at the speech this weekend when Hillary got heckled.
All right, Alexandra, she did get support after the heckling. I guess it’s not a surprise, is it?
ALEXANDRA ACKER, YOUNG DEMOCRATS OF AMERICA: The heckler was actually one lone woman who was not a delegate to the convention. It was the College Democrats of America convention. This is a middle-aged woman. I was really proud of all the students in the room who were cheering over her and supported Senator Clinton, and the students escorted her out of the room. It was a very minor incident. Senator Clinton was the picture of poise and went right back to her speech talking about issues that matter to young Americans.
HANNITY: Now, look, Bay Buchanan, I’ve been out on the stump. I know this is a surprise for some people, I’ve actually gotten heckled once or twice. It was by Alan’s friends.
ALAN COLMES, CO-HOST: I actually gave them good money for that, too.
HANNITY: All right, that doesn’t surprise me. Here’s my only gripe. Hillary can be in the campaign. Bay Buchanan, this is what you write about extensively in the book, she never gets tough questions. She doesn’t put herself in an environment where she gets asked tough questions. Isn’t that true?
BAY BUCHANAN, AUTHOR: There’s no question. It’s a very safe and cautious campaign. They’ve got a lot of money. So everything is programmed and orchestrated. So there’s no chance of her making a mistake. She doesn’t do the talk radio circuit, for instance, and get out there, let the people call in, ask questions.
The whole campaign is programmed so that they know the results. And she’s very, very restrained as a result, and it comes across as not a very natural candidate.
HANNITY: You know, Alexandra, what are we going to do in the case — here I’m reading from the Brookings Institute, a liberal think-tank today, in The New York Times, an op-ed piece, the headline is, “The War That We Might Just Win.”
This is written by two guys who have been, you know, extremely critical of Bush’s handling of Iraq, calling it at points a miserable handling of Iraq, and they’re now saying in this particular piece, “We were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce, not necessarily victory, but a sustainable stability that would be acceptable to both the Iraqis and the United States.”
How does Hillary go from supporting the war, being against the war, wanting to de-fund the war, and now, if these two liberal think-tank guys are correct, winnable, you know, what did she do then? How does she recover from the flip-flopping?
ACKER: I think there’s a big difference between having security in Iraq and a winnable war. Senator Clinton, like the overwhelming majority of Americans, supported the war at first.
HANNITY: Well, The New York Times, the headline by two liberal think-tank guys, “The War We Might Just Win.”
ACKER: Well, two people are rightfully allowed to have their opinions, but the overwhelming majority of Americans, like Senator Clinton, supported the war initially and now have come to the conclusion that the Bush administration’s mishandling of this war is not in the best interests of Americans’ foreign security. It’s not in the best interest of fighting the war on terror.
HANNITY: But, politically, does this put her in the position that, if we actually win this war, that that’s bad for her politically? And what a horrible position for a candidate to be in.
ACKER: Not at all. Every American wants to see a free and democratic and safe Iraq.
HANNITY: But not if we pull out. She wants to pull out.
ACKER: She wants to bring the troops home safely because she doesn’t believe a military solution is the answer to this problem…
HANNITY: Then why did she vote to send them there?
ACKER: … as an overwhelming majority of Americans. Like the overwhelming majority of Americans, she went in based on faulty intelligence that was provided to her by the Bush administration.
COLMES: Do I have to go once again through every single Republican who wants us redeployed, who wants us out, who says we can only have a political solution? Newt Gingrich, who called it a failure. William F. Buckley, Jr., said we could only have a political, not a military, solution. Petraeus said the same thing before he assumed his current position.
And, Bay Buchanan, you want to talk about Republicans or Democrats being afraid to take tough questions, why won’t the Republicans do the YouTube debate?
BUCHANAN: Well, because those aren’t tough questions. Those are stupid questions.
COLMES: No, they’re not. They’re the best questions we’ve had so far.
BUCHANAN: We don’t need to be presented by a snowman asking questions. That was the dumbest daggone thing I ever did see! But that’s not…
COLMES: The dumbest?
BUCHANAN: … the question that we are here to discuss.
COLMES: Well, we’re talking about it. That’s what we’re talking about.
BUCHANAN: We should have a little respect for presidential candidates, and we should show some respect to the electorate, and give them a real challenging exchange, not put them in front of just a joke of an hour or two.
COLMES: When you talk about respect for presidential candidates, Bay, does that include people who hold up signs quoting George Stephanopoulos at a Hillary Clinton rally, who, by the way, got treated a lot better than people who wore anti-Bush T-shirts to Bush rallies in 2004. You had one couple that was handcuffed and arrested for doing that at a Bush rally when he was running for president last time.
BUCHANAN: Alan, you seem to be somewhat angry at the fact that we’re doing a story on this one heckler.
COLMES: One heckler.
BUCHANAN: You all asked me to come discuss this. I’m not the one that put this program together. So you’re the ones that are raising this issue. But I think the key here is what my opponent here, my colleague here is talking about.
Hillary is always with the American people, American people, American people. They poll, and poll, and poll, and Hillary just stays there, right behind the crowd. There’s no leadership here whatsoever. And I think, Alan, you would agree with me that we hope these two liberals are accurate and this war can be won and that America does win it.
COLMES: You’re talking about the Brookings Institution.
BUCHANAN: Absolutely. I don’t care who says it.
COLMES: Alexandra, these are two think-tankers who have been for the war all along. They’ve been pro-war, pro-Iraq. They’ve been promoting this idea. I think they’ve been wrong.
And nobody, by the way, Alexandra, has defined what “win” is. The administration’s flip-flopped. First, it was create democracy. Then, it’s if we can just get security in there. Then, it’s as soon as we can get out safely we’ll get out, without a democracy being created. They keep flip-flopping on what the goal is.
ACKER: That’s right. That’s right. They keep moving their benchmarks back, as they know they’re failing and failing more miserably.
BUCHANAN: Listen, nobody’s had as many positions on this war as Hillary Rodham Clinton. She’s been everywhere. And you know what? She’s not going to come back, in response to what Sean asked. She cannot change, because she’s in a primary with somebody who truly is against the war, always has been against the war, and she can’t risk upsetting the grassroots. So she will stay against this war.
COLMES: She is very clear in saying that, knowing now what she knew then, she would not support the war, because she didn’t have full information. She’s been very clear all along. But you want to present her as a flip-flopper. You think it worked with Kerry, but you want to use that. That’s going to be your tactic with Hillary.
(CROSSTALK)
ACKER: … on her desire to pull the troops out when she’s president.
BUCHANAN: She was very clear when she made the announcement and voted for the war, she said very specifically, “I am certain of these facts. We know they are true. They are undisputable.”
ACKER: But if only the facts had been true, Bay. The facts were wrong.
BUCHANAN: She said her husband had the same facts, friend.
HANNITY: And he made out the same case, December 16, 1998, when he bombed Iraq, he said the exact same thing.
ACKER: The facts were wrong.
COLMES: He didn’t do a regime change.
HANNITY: But anyway, we’ve got to run, guys. Good to see you.
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