'An Exceedingly Strange New Respect '
Reader No. 1, who I met up with last night to talk politics, sports and lots of other good stuff while watching the Celts game, sent in an email this morning with a header 'The Circle Game':

Two columns this morning that resonated with conversation last night and for some reason reminded me of an article you wrote many years ago about right and left being flip-flopped and often indistinguishable. If some folk can see Margaret Thatcher in Hilary Clinton, I guess anything is possible.

While Carl Bernstein clarifies McCarthyism: Another opportunity for Obama, but will he capitalize on it?

I don't think Noemie Emery (see first link) understands the irony of conservatives now acting like liberals in the 'strange new respect' category, sort of the way conservatives bemoan liberals who hurl charges of 'fascism' and then hurl charges of 'fascism' right back. The two sides really are 'often indistinguishable.' Reminds me of the old line about how one should choose an enemy well, for you often end up resembling them. ...

Anyway, Emery's piece is a conservative's attempt to explain what Hub Blog now calls the Clinton-Conservative Convergence, a sympton of which is the 'exceedingly strange new respect' conservatives have for Hillary. Don't buy into Emery's alleged admiration for Hillary's grit (the same could be said about any presidential candidate's grit -- including Obama's). But do pay attention to her any-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend explanation. It's quite Leninish. So I'll add that to my growing list of the root causes of the Clinton-Conservative Convergence: part any-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend, part generational, part Operation Chaos, part Iraq (Hillary's more moderate -- something Emery points out), and part mirror-image triangulators' respect for a fellow triangulator. ... Reader No. 1 and I last night hashed out two more obvious explanations that I forgot: part natural ganging up on the front-runner Obama and part sincere concern about Obama's competence. ...

Update -- I'm pretty sure this is not the post Reader No. 1 referenced above. But it does use Star Trek to explain how hard-core liberals and conservatives end up resembling each other more than they care to admit. ... Of course you can always fall back on a two-scorpions-in-a-bottle analogy. ...

Update II -- From Reader No. 1:

I don't think we discussed this, but one more reason on the part of some conservatives to support Hilary is that she is genuinely seen as the least objectionable alternative. A truly conservative temperment knows even near-perfection is impossible, so inclines to the least bad option, or at least what is perceived as such. This view aggregates many of the other reasons cited for conservatives to implicitly back Hilary.

The other key point, which is a problem with the Emery piece, is viewing the conservatives as a block when the movement is now in fact many a collection of many subgroups...

One Hub Blog note: But in the unlikely event she wins the nomination, the 'least objectionable' love-fest would instantly be over. It would be back to partisan culture wars that Hillary's already said she's ready, able and willing to fight. My fear is that conservatives -- by propping up and/or embracing Hillary -- are creating potential blowback for themselves in a general election that I'm convinced she'd win. Obama is the best, and perhaps last, line of defense against a Clinton restoration. ...  ¶ 10:17 AM