To how many other wingnuts is she going to suck up? And does she really think it'll make a difference?

First it was Rupert Murdoch. Now Hillary Clinton is sucking up to Matt Drudge:

As Senator Barack Obama prepared to give a major speech on Iraq one morning a few weeks ago, a flashing red-siren alert went up on the Drudge Report Web site. It read, “Queen of the Quarter: Hillary Crushes Obama in Surprise Fund-Raising Surge,” and, “$27 Million, Sources Tell Drudge Report.”

Within minutes, the Drudge site had injected Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s fund-raising success into the day’s political news on the Internet and cable television. It did not halt coverage of Mr. Obama’s speech or his criticism of her vote to authorize the war in 2002, but along the front lines of the campaign — the hourly, intensely fought effort to capture the news cycle or deny ownership of it to the other side — it was a telling assault.

Mrs. Clinton’s aides declined to discuss how the Drudge Report got access to her latest fund-raising figures nearly 20 minutes before the official announcement went to supporters. But it was a prime example of a development that has surprised much of the political world: Mrs. Clinton is learning to play nice with the Drudge Report and the powerful, elusive and conservative-leaning man behind it.

It ought to tell you something that outside of the Republican candidates themselves, everyone's trying to make nice about Hillary. Yesterday's appalling all-female guest panel on Press the Meat, which had among them enough botox to kill an entire city and enough "girly"-colored suits to make one vow to wear nothing but navy blue forever, had nothing bad to say about her. Even the odious Kate O'Beirne, who can usually be relied on to do something snarky, was restrained.

This means one of two things: either the right wants Hillary to be the nominee because she is the candidate that can best rally the Republican base to show up to vote against her, or else they're confident that she'll completely abandon her own base and play nice with the conservative, screw-the-middle-class-and-the-poor, Corporations Über Alles, Christofascist Zombie Brigade agenda.

And no, the two are not mutually exclusive.