Mark Steyn says Hillary Clinton will not win the presidency in 2016 — mainly because she won’t run.
“Republicans are overly pessimistic about Hillary Clinton because they don’t think any Republican candidate can defeat Hillary Clinton,” the conservative columnist told The Daily Caller in an interview about his new book, “The Undocumented Mark Steyn.”
“And they may be right about that,” he continued. “But the person that can defeat Hillary Clinton and will defeat Hillary Clinton is Hillary Clinton. I don’t believe she will run and I believe she will eventually identify the reasons why she shouldn’t run and she will not run.”
“I don’t believe the American people want to spend another eight years with the Clintons,” he explained.
Steyn says the Clinton “brand” is no longer what it once was.
“It’s interesting to me, as a way of distancing themselves from Obama, Democrats are currently calling themselves ‘Clinton Democrats,'” Steyn said. “But that isn’t working for them. And that brand isn’t what it was.”
As for who he would like to see win the Republican nomination in 2016, Steyn says he is a fan of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.
“To me, it’s a field where I naturally incline more to the Ted Cruz-side of things than the Chris Christie-side of things,” Steyn said.
“I prefer guys who don’t concede ground,” he elaborated. “One thing I rather like about Ted Cruz is he actually steps a little further away and says, ‘no, no, no, you’ve come this far with me, just come a little further, come a little further.’ Which I think is what’s necessary now.”
Steyn also likes Rand Paul, though he says the Kentucky senator is “too isolationist for my tastes.”
“I’m basically a 19th century imperialist a century past his sell by date,” Steyn explained, “but I think Rand Paul is a decent, shrewd and savvy guy who again is actually challenging the Republican Party to rethink some of these issues.”
“My worry is that, as usual, the ‘smart guys’ in the Republican Party will have decided who they want and that guy will suck up all the money and we will end up with this year’s, you know, Bob Dole or John McCain,” he went on, “someone who knows how to give a graceful concession speech.”
But Steyn is worried more about the culture than about politics. Conservatives, he said, currently “focus too much on Tuesdays in November, whereas the real action is the other 364 days of the year.”
“If you take the biggest political development in recent years: Gay marriage is a huge victory,” he explained. “You can’t name a politician who led the way on that in either party. In essence, the culture decided and then cultural forces decided to get with the gay marriage program and the political class — and I would argue even the judges — played catch up. And the left is far more effective at just burrowing into institutions and playing the long game.”
Just look at former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers, said Steyn.
Bill Ayers “basically snuck down the chimney of key civilizational institutions,” explained Steyn. “Bill Ayers in the 60s thought it was a smart move to go around blowing these places up. Then he figured out, ‘no, the smart thing is to burrow down, go down the chimney of these institutions and hollow them out from within. That’s why Bill Ayers is now a so-called educator.”
“He was a terrorist and now he is an educator,” Steyn continued. “And arguably he’s done far more damage to the country as an educator than he ever did as a terrorist. And I think if you look at the way the left has done that, not just with education, but with the entertainment industry, with the media, with mainline churches, with the judiciary, they are much more effective than the right are in playing the long game.”