Here is how the “Hillary is a Republican” game is played and why it so absurd. (h/t Nick Alpers whose post got me started and from which I borrowed much of Step One.)
Step one: Ignore all the ways that Hillary Clinton breaks with proposals that almost all Republicans support but that are anathema to Democrats: repealing Dodd-Frank; repealing the ACA; block granting Medicaid; turning Medicare into a voucher program; cutting food stamps by 60% and instituting a work requirement to get them; overturning Roe, banning abortion and opposing women’s rights across the board; destroying unions and all workers’ rights; freezing or even eliminating the federal minimum wage; privatizing social security; denying the reality of global warming and opposing cap and trade, a carbon tax, and President Obama’s clean energy plan, instituting Voter ID; reversing pretty much all civil rights legislation; overturning Obergefell and eliminating all protection for the the LGBTQ community. These are ideas that pretty much all Republicans support and Hillary opposes them.
Step two: Attack Hillary for not being on the far left of the Democratic Party which supports single payer, breaking up the big banks, an immediate increase in the minimum wage to $15 everywhere and free college tuition and a moratorium on fracking. Most Democrats do not support these proposals although almost all Democrats, including Hillary support the goals to which they point: universal health insurance, preventing the banks from abusing their position; higher wages, and eliminating barriers to college education. Why don’t all Democrat support the left wing proposals? In part because they believe, for serious reasons, that they are not necessary to attaining the goal (single payer, breaking up the banks, reduced tuition for all). In part because they believe that they are politically impossible as they require tax increases (single payer, ending tuition) or other changes (replacing all private insurance with a public plan) that in the near term would be unacceptable to most Americans. In part because they think they would be counterproductive (a $15 minimum wage in low wage parts of the country). And in part because they don’t believe that the dangers of fracking, properly regulated, are greater than those of drilling for oil, think that good regulations on fracking are easier to attain than a moratorium, and do think there advantages to reducing oil imports as we transition to non-fossil fuels. Now you can argue about whether the critics of these proposals are right or not. I happen to think they are in most cases right. But there is no justification for saying that the left wing view on these issues are the only sensible progressive position let alone that someone who disagrees with them is a Republican. The basic fact is that the vast majority of Democrats politicians and voters are dubious about those ideas.
Step three: Lie, mislead, and exaggerate. (1) Hillary did not support the coup in Honduras but tried to reverse it. (2) As bad as it was, DOMA was supported by most LGBT activists because it prevented a constitutional amendment that would have made Obergefell impossible. And most Democrats came to support gay marriage only recently. Blaming her for the views she held when most Democrats were waffling does not make her a Republican. (3) The 94 Crime Bill had some very objectionable features but Bernie voted for it because it had some good features. Bill signed it and many Black member of Congress voted for it for those reasons and because crime in poor and Black communities was a serious problem. And the bill played a very small role in increasing mass incarceration which started under Nixon and mostly took place at the state level.
Step four: Focus on issues where Democrats are divided and then claim that Democrats only are found on one side. Hillary is a moderate on foreign policy and national security issues. I’ve disagreed with her on the use of force on a few occasions and in part on the Patriot Act. Democrats are divided on those issues however and taking a moderate stance doesn’t make her a Republican.
Step five: Ignore that her voting record was on the left of the Democratic Party on average, that she voted with Bernie Sanders 93% of the time, and that on most of those votes she and Sanders were frequently opposed by the vast majority of Republicans.
Step six: Attack her for what her husband did almost twenty years ago. Yes, Bill supported NAFTA. And Democrats who were split then have turned against trade agreements. (And have done so, in my view, under the misapprehension that trade agreements are a major source of growing inequality. They have not helped but there are other, deeper causes.) And, yes, Bill, under some political duress, signed a terrible welfare reform bill after twice rejecting even worse ones. It was a terrible mistake, and while we don’t really know what Hillary recommended he do, it was a disappointing decision and has had terrible consequences and exacerbated deep poverty. But it was under political duress and might well have made it saved the 96 election for Clinton. And it came at a time when, thanks to an increase in both the minimum wage and the Earned Income Tax Credit, and an expansion of food stamps, as well as Clinton’s adroit management of the economy, poverty was heading down (and reached one of its lowest levels in our history by the end of his second term.) That substantial economic progress for low-income Americans is part of the Clinton record as well. Had it continued, we would never had worried about the consequences of the welfare reform bill.
Step seven: When you get called out for steps one through six, say you only meant to say that Hillary is like a liberal Republican from the 1960s and 70s, a Jack Javits or Arlen Specter. But that’s nonsense in two different ways. On the one hand, those liberal Republicans were still Republicans–they voted for Republicans to control the Senate; they voted for bad Republican appointments to the Supreme Court (Clarence Thomas, for example); they actually did support Wall Street at times when Democrats opposed it–and while her record is not perfect Hillary has voted against Wall Street more often than not. On the other hand, they actually were liberals on social welfare and environmental legislation who voted with the Democrats of their day much of the time. .
It’s a fun game. But as political analysis, it’s nonsense.