Royal's Loss Has the Hillary Clinton Campaign Spooked

I'm sure had Sigolene Royal won the French presidential election this past weekend, the Clinton campaign would have been touting the virtues of a female ehief executive. However, after Royal got skunked by a conservative, the Clinton campaign is quickly trying to disavow any connection between the two:

There was a time when advisers to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) looked abroad for proof that women can get elected to a top leadership role in the modern world: Margaret Thatcher, the former British prime minister; Angela Merkel, the German chancellor; and Michelle Bachelet, the president of Chile.

But as presidential candidate Ségolène Royal was defeated by a conservative man who had been France's chief law enforcement officer, the Clinton campaign was quick to dismiss comparisons between their candidate and her Socialist counterpart across the Atlantic. "Other than the fact that they are both women, they don't have much in common," said Howard Wolfson, Clinton's communications director.

The article goes on with a lengthy defense of Ms. Clinton (most of which is scripted by Clinton's communication director), but there's a lot more of a connection between these two then the campaign wants to admit. Both are pretty dedicated lefties who want to solve every problem with federal spending, and given Ms. Clinton's recent U-turn on Iraq, neither can be counted on to support an active defense of the country. And both will likely be opposed by strong law-and-order conservatives - assuming Ms. Clinton gets past Obama in the primaries.