Geoff Garin:
Fair Is FairOver at TPM they claim Garin's piece is the Hillary campaign's "
most detailed case yet that the truly negative campaign is being run not by Hillary, but by Obama."
Here are excerpts of what Garin seems to believe qualifies Obama's campaign as the most negative:
The day before this ad went on the air, David Axelrod, Barack Obama's chief strategist, appeared with me on "Meet the Press." He was asked whether Hillary Clinton would bring "the changes necessary" to Washington, and his answer was "no." This was in keeping with the direct, personal character attacks that the Obama campaign has leveled against Clinton from the beginning of this race -- including mailings in Pennsylvania that describe her as "the master of a broken system."
I am not making any bones about the fact that our campaign has pointed out what we believe are legitimate differences between Clinton and Obama on important issues. We have spoken out when we thought the Obama campaign made false distinctions, such as when it ran advertising in Pennsylvania on standing up to oil companies, particularly when Clinton was the one who did stand up to the oil companies by voting against the Bush-Cheney energy bill. And we believed it was appropriate to debate Obama's comments about working people in small towns, because they expressed a view of small-town Americans with which Hillary Clinton strongly disagrees.
Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, held a conference call with reporters and called Hillary "one of the most secretive politicians in America today" -- a striking personal charge in the era of Dick Cheney.
In the Philadelphia debate last week, Obama incorrectly said that his campaign addressed Hillary's misstatements on Bosnia only when asked to by reporters. In fact, Obama's campaign has organized several conference calls on the topic, including one this past weekend in which the featured speaker said that Clinton lacks "the moral authority to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on Memorial Day" (a statement the Obama campaign thankfully repudiated after we called it on it). Even though many reporters participated in those calls, Obama's misstatement in Philadelphia was almost completely ignored.
Obama said Hillary doesn’t represent change and is secretive? That’s it, and a comment by a general that Obama repudiated? Hillary can lie about Bosnia (and a lot more), but it’s Obama and his campaign’s fault for pointing it out?
This must be Garin’s way of making up for his embarrassing appearance on Meet the Press last Sunday, when he could defend Hillary on anything:
by RFK Lives
Sun Apr 20, 2008 at 07:32:12 AM PDT
Axelrod is on opposite Garin right now. While no one ever accused Axelrod of being half as articulate as Obama is, he's pushing Garin around Timmy's set.
Garin wasn't able to answer Timmy's question about HRC's debate pledge to set up a NATO-type alliance in the ME. He openly admitted that he wasn't well-informed about that subject. He didn't distinguish himself anywhere else.
Axelrod pushed Garin to cite a past public comment that HRC made against NAFTA. Garin couldn't do so. Garin couldn't do much of anything to sell his candidate.
Timmy hit Garin w/HRC's inconsistent statements about MoveOn. Garin had no meaningful reply. When Timmy asked Garin about HRC's comments about MoveOn intimidating caucus participants, Garin took a pass.
Yes, it's just one Sunday am gabfest that, in the big picture, will have a minimal impact on the ulitmate outcome of this campaign. It's an illustration, however, of how incoherent and disorganized HRC's campaign appears to have become. If Garin is the chosen surrogate who's sent out to represent your campaign to a national network audience, you have major problems.
Meet the Press: Obama’s Axelrod and
Clinton’s Garin debated almost every current political issue with respectful intensity. Axelrod skillfully took a question about the apparent gap between Obama’s rhetoric on running a positive campaign and his campaign’s negative tactics and put Garin on the defensive on NAFTA. Garin then got enmeshed in a series of weak moments involving Clinton’s honesty and Mark Penn. Garin on several occasions begged off answering questions, citing his newness to the campaign and/or his unfamilarity with the details of her policy positions.
link Hillary is arguing that she is more electability based on everything from Obama's indirect connections to Farrakhan (despite
Ed Rendell's praise of him) to knowing a member of the Weather Underground, overlooking her links to the group:
SEN. CLINTON: Well, I think that is a fair general statement, but I also believe that Senator Obama served on a board with Mr. Ayers for a period of time, the Woods Foundation, which was a paid directorship position.
And if I'm not mistaken, that relationship with Mr. Ayers on this board continued after 9/11 and after his reported comments, which were deeply hurtful to people in New York, and I would hope to every American, because they were published on 9/11 and he said that he was just sorry they hadn't done more. And what they did was set bombs and in some instances people died. So it is -- you know, I think it is, again, an issue that people will be asking about. And I have no doubt -- I know Senator Obama's a good man and I respect him greatly but I think that this is an issue that certainly the Republicans will be raising. And it goes to this larger set of concerns about, you know, how we are going to run against John McCain. You know, I wish the Republicans would apologize for the disaster of the Bush-Cheney years and not run anybody, just say that it's time for the Democrats to go back into the White House. (Laughter, applause.)
Unfortunately, they don't seem to be willing to do that. So we know that they're going to be out there, full force. And you know, I've been in this arena for a long time. I have a lot of baggage, and everybody has rummaged through it for years. (Laughter.) And so therefore, I have, you know, an opportunity to come to this campaign with a very strong conviction and feeling that I will be able to withstand whatever the Republican sends our way.
linkAfter Mrs. Clinton criticized Mr. Obama for not severing all Ayers ties, Mr. Obama said, “By Senator Clinton’s own vetting standards, I don’t think she would make it, since President Clinton pardoned or commuted the sentences of two members of the Weather Underground.”
That referred to commutations by Mr. Clinton in January 2001, shortly before leaving office, for Linda Evans and Susan Rosenberg. Ms. Evans had been convicted of weapons and explosives charges connected with eight bombings in the mid-’80s and sentenced to 40 years in prison. Ms. Rosenberg had been charged in connection with a 1981 armed robbery in which two police officers and a security guard were killed, and was serving 58 years after being convicted of weapons charges in a 1984 case.
linkThe despicable hypocrisy doesn't end there.
by teacherken
Fri Apr 25, 2008 at 03:46:34 AM PDT
My title is a quotation from
Hillary Clinton's attack on TUCC, the currently recommended diary by Kid Oakland, as thoughtful a writer as there is in he blogosphere. The words appear at the end of his piece in this setting:
Clinton has also shown that she thinks that attacking an opposing candidate's house of worship is fair game in a televised debate.
In that, Hillary Clinton is deeply, grievously, morally wrong. She is also practicing heinously destructive politics.
practicing heinously destructive politicsI think we will increasingly hear those kind of statements from thoughtful Democrats. But I want to back almost two months to some similar statements, offered before the controversy over Rev. Wright, and then look forward.
<…>
Hillary Clinton met with and sought the approval of Richard Mellon Scaife, despite that man's long history of smears of Democrats in general and the Clintons in particular. He has never apologized for any of that. When questioned on this by Keith Olbermann, Clinton laughed and offered words about believing in the possibility of redemption. So if as a practicing Christian she believes in redemption, why does she insist that Rev. Wright, Bill Ayers, and TUCC be thrown beneath the bus, but does not apply the same criteria to Richard Mellon Scaife or some of the others whose support she now solicits and accepts. We rightly criticize the John McCain who in the 2000 cycle denounced the Jerry Falwells but who in this cycle embraced them. Anyone who is a serious Christian would certainly remember the words about motes and beams, Sen. Clinton. Do you? Or is your standard of redemption that if someone is willing to support you all else is forgiven, that your sense of political expediency has so debased your moral judgment that an unapologetic Scaife is superior to the flawed by genuinely Christian Jeremiah Wright. You have chosen to affiliate with a man who used inherited wealth to attempt to bully and destroy others and are willing to ignore that because it gains you political support. Jeremiah Wright several times chose a life of service, of little personal benefit, of the hard road of challenging people to go beyond themselves, as seen in the many ministries of TUCC, and yet you are willing to attempt to use him as a blunt instrument to destroy Obama, not caring for the thousands of others whom you smear at the same time, many who heard the words to which you object and yet did not leave that church.
If the standard Clinton wishes applied is that to hear offensive words should cause one to get up and leave, then the words she offered in that debate, the words that so bother Kid Oakland, should be the standard applied to her. Like Sen. McCarthy's actions led the mild-mannered Joe Welch to posit the concern that the Senator no longer had a sense of decency, I am waiting for serious leading Democrats to fire that shot across the bow of the SS Clinton Candidacy, with the clear meaning that continuing on this destructive path will lead to rejection of her and her campaign.
On March 8, one of the things I included near the end of my diary was this well-known expression:
All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to remain silent in its presence.
While I hope that even the destructiveness we see from the Clinton campaign can NOT win the nomination for her, the damage she is doing represents a triumph of evil and brings real hurt to the Democratic party. It is time for senior Democrats to make this clear, at first in private and if she and her campaign will not listen then in public.
Kid Oakland's diary is the reason I have written this. So let me end by repeating some of his words, yet again:
... Hillary Clinton is deeply, grievously, morally wrong. She is also practicing heinously destructive politics.
Peace.
More background on
Hillary's new friend, Richard Scaife:
Region funds Episcopalians' move to divideUS millionaire bankrolls crusade against gay Anglican priestsGay-hating Episcopalian schismatics don't get to take the church keys with them when they splitIn Garin's mind Hillary's divisive and nasty campaign is justified, "fair is fair." With his op-ed today, it's clear that Hillary is campaigning for Victim in Chief.
From imaginary sniper fire to a campaign in the red, Hillary's primary run is one of the worse Hillary's questions about Obama's patriotism and her enemies listedited typo, extra word
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