ANTHONY WEINER’S HUMA PROBLEM AND OURS: DANIEL GREENFIELD
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/secretary-of-state-huma-abedin/
Secretary of State Huma Abedin?
In 2017, Huma Abedin may be the wife of the mayor of New York City or the National Security Adviser to the President of the United States. It’s even possible that she might be both.
Huma Abedin’s husband, Anthony Weiner, was once the front-runner for the top job. Weiner’s career was temporarily torpedoed by a sex scandal, but a weak campaign field has tempted him back into the race and already positioned him at the number two spot.
Weiner’s competition is a lesbian City Council speaker, who is seen as a Bloomberg toady, a Comptroller who may soon be headed to jail for campaign finance fraud and a radical leftist Public Advocate who quotes Che and whose wife once claimed to be a lesbian.
In that company, Weiner no longer looks as freakish as he once did and with a $4.3 million war chest, he could win by drowning his Democratic opponents in cash and then fundraising all over again during the general election when he becomes the only alternative to a Republican mayor.
Bloomberg proved that even an unpopular candidate despised by most voters could win elections by flooding community and interest groups with cash and Weiner’s biggest asset isn’t even his war chest; it’s his connection to the Clintons. Weiner’s connection to a Clinton White House means more money for the city and that is something that his party and most community groups are eager to get a taste of.
The woman at the heart of that connection is his wife. Media reports say that Huma Abedin is the one to decide whether Weiner runs and the existence of the New York Times Magazine image rehab profile makes it clear that she has already decided. But no one really believed that Huma Abedin would have stayed married to a formerly promising politician who would never again run for public office.
The only thing standing between Huma Abedin and Gracie Mansion is Joe Lhota, a balding Giuliani official and Weiner’s likely Republican opponent, whose biggest asset is the Giuliani brand. Lhota is pitching himself as a libertarian alternative to the Bloombergian nanny state, but the chances are still good that the Clinton machine will roll over him on Election Day.
For most politicians, Gracie Mansion is the last stop of their political careers. Ed Koch, the last mayor to try and move to higher office, couldn’t make it. Lindsay took a shot at the White House in 1972 and Weiner likely has dreams of following in his footsteps. It’s an unlikely project, but if Weiner climbs into the top spot in the city, it will only be as a stepping stone to higher office.
By then Huma Abedin is likely to have an even bigger place in the political sun. Bill Clinton traded his support in the last election for the coronation of his wife. Hillary Clinton does have a likability problem, despite the media’s best efforts to pretend otherwise, and she lost the last time she was the inevitable candidate for the Democratic Party nomination. But 2016 could be her year.
The prospective Democratic presidential candidates for 2016 include such charismatic figures as Joe Biden, Maryland Governor Martin “Rain Tax” O’Malley and New York’s Machiavellian governor Andrew Cuomo. It’s the kind of race that even Hillary might be able to win. And then it’s up to the Republican Party to put up a candidate who can communicate better than any of its candidates have in the last generation.
President Hillary Clinton is almost certain to take along Huma Abedin. The two women were virtually inseparable and politicians like to keep their close confidants and aides by their side. Huma Abedin served as the Deputy Chief of Staff for Hillary Clinton during her Secretary of State days. Jake Sullivan, the last man to hold it before the Kerry era, moved on to become the State Department’s director of policy planning and then became the national security advisor to Joe Biden.
Moving Huma Abedin over into a job like the director of policy planning would allow her to reshape the State Department’s foreign policy worldview. And from there it would not be impossible to move her up to National Security Advisor or even Secretary of State.
Both of those positions might be a little too high profile for Abedin who works best in the shade. A 2007 Observer profile of her struggled to dig up any information on her official role, and whether with Clinton or Weiner, she has stuck to the background part.
The controversy that flared up over her background shows why she avoids the spotlight. With close family members, including her parents, involved in the Muslim Brotherhood and her own work at their Institute for Muslim Minority Affairs, which was set up by the Saudis and Muslim Brotherhood to build a fifth column of Islamization within the United States; Huma Abedin has every reason to be the woman behind the man or the woman behind the woman.
The Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, founded by Abdullah Omar Naseef, a Muslim Brotherhood player who has been accused of funding Al Qaeda front groups, is not an ideal mention on any resume. And yet few Republicans have been willing to challenge Huma Abedin when she was serving as the Deputy Chief of Staff for the Secretary of State. Would they be willing to challenge an emboldened Secretary of State Huma Abedin?
Obama has set a precedent that background checks are passé. So who’s going to do one on Huma Abedin?
By 2014, Huma Abedin may be married to the mayor of the biggest city in the country. By 2018, she may be the National Security Advisor.
It would be a rapid ascension, but the process of moving agents of influence up the ladder has shredded the normal seasoning process that would usually required for the top spots. The Center for American Progress’ Denis McDonough went from being an aide to an advisor to the Deputy National Security Advisor to the Chief of Staff in a handful of years. It would not be too hard to imagine Abedin making the same rush up the ladder while the media gushes at her ambition and her posh designer handbags.
In an age of terror and appeasement, Huma Abedin’s Muslim background is her best credential. The close collaboration between the Obama and Clinton foreign policy infrastructure and the Muslim Brotherhood makes her own Muslim Brotherhood background another plus.
What seems like treason to most ordinary Americans is ideologically convenient to a political and diplomatic clique that believes empowering “moderate” Islamists is our best defense against Al Qaeda. Placing Huma Abedin in a position where she can shape American foreign policy would be their show of sincerity to the Brotherhood.
None of this is inevitable. Another Twitter scandal could sink Weiner’s comeback and a more likable Democrat could pull together enough support and media adoration to challenge Hillary Clinton. And the work of researchers and investigators could still sink Huma Abedin the way it sank Susan Rice.
Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.
Comments are closed.
