the girl can't help it

from american thinker: Hillary has trapped herself in a mess where she dare not take a clear position on illegal alien driver's licenses, and seemingly is unable to stop waffling and obfuscating. Evasion has always worked for her in the past, but now, with a wartime presidency at stake and Democrat rivals demanding clarity, her old tricks like the gender card just don't work. Everyone knows Khomeini and Kim Jong-il will not be cowed by a demand to leave the girl alone.

But she doesn't know what to do, so she just makes ever more elaborate obfuscations.

Ben Smith of The Politico caught Hillary being Hillary yesterday, under questioning by Candy Crowley of CNN. Lacking her husband's likability and skills as a smooth liar, she seems unable to get out of the trap she has laid for herself. Now she seems to be saying the advisability of licenses for illegal aliens (clearly a national security matter) depends on the state.

Here is the CNN transcript cited by Smith:

CROWLEY: If I wrote a story that said: "Absent a broad illegal immigration bill, Hillary Clinton agrees about giving driver's licenses to illegal immigrants," is that correct?

CLINTON: No. What I have said is that I support what governors are trying to do. And governors are on the front lines because of the failures to get comprehensive immigration reform.

There are already eight states that issues driver's licenses without any verification of citizenship. That is a decision that the governors and legislatures and the people of those states have made. I understand...

CROWLEY: But you see why people think...

CLINTON: Well, but you know, Candy...

CROWLEY: ... that you are not answering the question.

CLINTON: Well, but you know, Candy, well, but I think that if you go back and look at the complexity of this issue, I don't think a lot of these hard questions lend themselves to raising your hand. And I know that that's easier in a 30 second context to try to do.

I think the fact that governors are being forced into this position is really unfortunate. They should not be making immigration policy. The federal government should be making immigration policy and that's what I'm going to try to do as president again and I do not believe that in the context of federal immigration reform that that would be an issue that governors would have to contend with.

Hillary's use of "again" ("that's what I'm going to try to do as president again") has drawn a lot of notice as a Freudian slip. I think it also shows that Hillary is reeling, truly off-balance, winging it. She is much more comfortable with scripted answers.

But now she is in a position where scripting just makes her look worse and worse, because it is obvious she is evading a straight answer. Almost painful to watch, but for the schadenfreude.

update: spitzer abandons illegals' license idea, for now
from nytimes: Chastened and contrite, Gov. Eliot Spitzer acknowledged this morning that he had misjudged public sentiment in proposing to grant driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, but he vowed to press Washington for comprehensive immigration legislation and said his critics had stoked partisan and irresponsible fears of immigrants...

In confirming his decision to abandon the license proposal, the governor said that he thought the goal of getting illegal immigrants licensed was still a worthwhile and important public policy goal, but he conceded that opposition to the plan was too strong for it to go forward. Even so, Mr. Spitzer, a freshman governor who has had a difficult first year in office, decried his critics, saying that some of them had used the issue as a political football and stoked unreasonable and irresponsible sentiments against illegal immigrants.