The Rise of The Machine
The Clinton attack machine that is. Today, on MidStream Radio, Ron, Jazz, Joe Gandleman and I talked about the Democrats and what has become a rather nasty race for the Presidential nomination. The nastiness has been especially prevalent from former President Bill Clinton who has pulled out all the stops when it comes to attacking his Hillary’s opponent. It has gotten so bad that even some of his most ardent supporters are not-so-quietly telling him to “cool it“. What I find to be amusing is that the Obama camp apparently did not expect this to happen.
Asking for donations of $50, she (Michelle Obama) wrote: “In the past week or two, another candidate’s spouse has been getting an awful lot of attention. . . . What we didn’t expect, at least not from our fellow Democrats, are the win-at-all-costs tactics we’ve seen recently. We didn’t expect misleading accusations that willfully distort Barack’s record.”
Ask anyone who has politically crossed swords with the Clinton’s and they will tell you that the “win-at-all-costs tactics” are what the Clinton’s do best. That is how they survived scandal after scandal.
Joe brought up a great point this morning that will bear watching. All of those who are currently decrying the use of these tactics against Senator Obama need to ask themselves one question. Will you consider this kind of campaigning “OK” once it is directed toward the Republican candidate? If you answer yes, then you simply should not be surprised to hear “hypocrite” coming your way.
UPDATE AND BUMP: Jonathan Chait in the LA Times wonders if the “right is right on Clinton”…
The big turning point seems to be this week, when the Clintons slammed Obama for acknowledging that Ronald Reagan changed the country. Everyone knows Reagan changed the country. Bill and Hillary have said he changed the country. But they falsely claimed that Obama praised Reagan’s ideas, saying he was a better president than Clinton — something he didn’t say and surely does not believe.
This might have been the most egregious case, but it wasn’t the first. Before the New Hampshire primaries, Clinton supporters e-mailed pro-choice voters claiming that Obama was suspect on abortion rights because he had voted “present” instead of “no” on some votes. (In fact, the president of the Illinois chapter of Planned Parenthood said she had coordinated strategy with Obama and wanted him to vote “present.”) Recently, there have been waves of robocalls in South Carolina repeatedly attacking “Barack Hussein Obama.”
Of course Chait would never utter the words that we were right on Bill and Hillary. Most likely if he ever did he would be pilloried by his fellow lefties. However, he is starting to see what most of us on the right saw 15 years ago. That Bill and Hillary will slime anyone in order to gain power. Welcome to the club Jonathan!
UPDATE NUMBER 2! HT Capt Ed. The New York Times gets into the act!
Bill Clinton, in his over-the-top advocacy of his wife’s candidacy, has at
times sounded like a man who’s gone off his medication. And some of the Clinton
surrogates have been flat-out reprehensible.
Excuse me….I’ll get back to you on this just as soon as I can stop laughing.
