Hillary the Moderate

Yesterday, I intimated in my post - okay, I came right out and said it - that Hillary Clinton was playing up centrist positions and opinions in anticipation of a possible 2008 presidential bid. My local paper, interestingly enough, printed a column today from Peter Beinert of The New Republic that pointed out that Mrs. Clinton has held moderate positions on issues such as the importance of faith for years, long before she was even talked about as a Senate candidate, and that her record on a strong military - she's for it - has been pretty consistent as well. Fine, but why is she making an effort to call attention to this now? She had no problem being seen as liberal until she realized it wouldn't help her much in a national election. And while we're on the subject, how is it that you can be too liberal for the Presidency but you can somehow be as far to the right to your heart's content if you seek the office? And why have we allowed such reactionaries to run the country? :-O