From now until November 4th, the spatter of little feet running in all directions to throw muck at Barack Obama will be the end game of McCain '08 with a reprise of the golden oldies of guilt-by-association--William Ayers, Jeremiah Wright and Tony Rezko.
Desperate to deflect attention from the economic abyss at the feet of voters, Republicans from Sarah Palin down (if that's the right word) will be out swiftboating away but, unlike John Kerry in 2004, Obama is taking them on openly.
"Sen. McCain and his operatives," he told a North Carolina rally today, "are gambling that they can distract you with smears rather than talk to you about substance. They'd rather try to tear our campaign down than lift this country up.
"That's what you do when you're out of touch, out of ideas, and running out of time."
Palin is racing down the low road in high heels and Fargo twang, accusing Obama of "palling around with terrorists" on the basis of a passing association with William Ayers, whose Vietnam protests took place when the candidate was in grade school.
An analyst for AP, hardly a liberal bastion, notes: "Palin's words avoid repulsing voters with overt racism. But is there another subtext for creating the false image of a black presidential nominee 'palling around' with terrorists while assuring a predominantly white audience that he doesn't see their America?
"In a post-Sept. 11 America, terrorists are envisioned as dark-skinned radical Muslims, not the homegrown anarchists of Ayers' day 40 years ago...(P)ortraying Obama as 'not like us' is another potential appeal to racism. It suggests that the Hawaiian-born Christian is, at heart, un-American."
McCain himself is not doing the dirty work, although this week's debate will surely put him in the position of having to approve or disown these despicable tactics. He won't be able to hide behind the skirts of his transgendered Dick Cheney.
Someone must have put up a sign in every McCain campaign office, "It's the economy, stupid, but don't tell Palin."
Showing posts with label swiftboating. Show all posts
Showing posts with label swiftboating. Show all posts
Sunday, October 05, 2008
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Clinton and Obama Take Command
It's 3 AM for the Hillary Clinton campaign, the red phone is ringing but there's no one to answer because they're all too busy squabbling among themselves.
On the brink of disaster, the putatively more experienced candidate for Commander-in-Chief has fired her campaign manager, muzzled her husband and chief strategist Mark Penn and, according to the New York Times, set out to overhaul an organization that has "set itself apart for its level of disorder and dysfunction."
The unkindest cut of all is an implied comparison to George W. Bush as an executive:
"Mrs. Clinton showed a tendency toward an insular management style, relying on a coterie of aides who have worked for her for years, her aides and associates said. Her choice of lieutenants, and her insistence on staying with them...was blamed by some associates for the campaign’s woes. Again and again, the senator was portrayed as a manager who valued loyalty and familiarity over experience and expertise."
The surprise on the other side has been the quick-response style of the supposedly dreamy Obama and his cohorts. Campaigning in Mississippi, he has been accusing Clinton of using "Republican tactics" against him.
“When in the midst of a campaign you decide to throw the kitchen sink at your opponent because you’re behind,” he says, “and your campaign starts leaking photographs of me when I’m traveling overseas wearing the native clothes of those folks to make people afraid, and then you run an ad talking about who’s going to answer the phone at three in the morning, an ad straight out of the Republican playbook, that’s not real change.”
Even mild-mannered former Sen. Bill Bradley, who ran in 2000, is striking back on his behalf, accusing the Clintons of “lying” to win.
“The bigger the lie, the better the chance they think they’ve got. That’s been their whole approach,” Bradley told a reporter. “She’s going to lose a whole generation of people who got involved in politics believing it could be something different.”
Heading down the stretch for the nomination, it's clear that Obama is going to be no John Kerry in response to swiftboating from opponents in either party.
On the brink of disaster, the putatively more experienced candidate for Commander-in-Chief has fired her campaign manager, muzzled her husband and chief strategist Mark Penn and, according to the New York Times, set out to overhaul an organization that has "set itself apart for its level of disorder and dysfunction."
The unkindest cut of all is an implied comparison to George W. Bush as an executive:
"Mrs. Clinton showed a tendency toward an insular management style, relying on a coterie of aides who have worked for her for years, her aides and associates said. Her choice of lieutenants, and her insistence on staying with them...was blamed by some associates for the campaign’s woes. Again and again, the senator was portrayed as a manager who valued loyalty and familiarity over experience and expertise."
The surprise on the other side has been the quick-response style of the supposedly dreamy Obama and his cohorts. Campaigning in Mississippi, he has been accusing Clinton of using "Republican tactics" against him.
“When in the midst of a campaign you decide to throw the kitchen sink at your opponent because you’re behind,” he says, “and your campaign starts leaking photographs of me when I’m traveling overseas wearing the native clothes of those folks to make people afraid, and then you run an ad talking about who’s going to answer the phone at three in the morning, an ad straight out of the Republican playbook, that’s not real change.”
Even mild-mannered former Sen. Bill Bradley, who ran in 2000, is striking back on his behalf, accusing the Clintons of “lying” to win.
“The bigger the lie, the better the chance they think they’ve got. That’s been their whole approach,” Bradley told a reporter. “She’s going to lose a whole generation of people who got involved in politics believing it could be something different.”
Heading down the stretch for the nomination, it's clear that Obama is going to be no John Kerry in response to swiftboating from opponents in either party.
Sunday, March 09, 2008
Pyrrhic Victory, Anyone?
Amid two tiny wins yesterday--in the Wyoming caucuses and the taking of Dennis Hastert's House seat by an Obama admirer--his supporters and Hillary Clinton's were hard at work to snatch defeat from the jaws of expected Democratic victory in November.
After the candidate's claim this week that only she and John McCain had crossed "the commander-in chief threshold," Clinton's campaign generalissimos were e-mailing journalists a memo headed "Obama's Iraq Plan: Just Words":
"Once again, it looks like Senator Obama is telling voters one thing while his campaign says those words should not to be mistaken for serious action...
"Senator Obama has made hard end dates about Iraq a centerpiece of his campaign and has repeatedly attacked Senator Clinton for not being clear about her intentions with regard to troop withdrawal.
"It turns out those attacks and speeches were just words. And if you can't trust Senator Obama's words, what's left?"
His campaign fired back: "The Clinton campaign has publicly admitted that the only way they can still win this election is by tearing Barack Obama down. They have called their attacks the 'kitchen sink strategy'...The result has been a constant barrage of attacks about Senator Obama's record that they know full well aren't true. And yet they repeat them, over and over again, day after day, in an attempt to deceive the American people..."
Well said, word warriors. Those people taking notes are from the Republican swiftboat squad, who will be happy to immortalize them, no matter which Democrat wins the nomination.
After the candidate's claim this week that only she and John McCain had crossed "the commander-in chief threshold," Clinton's campaign generalissimos were e-mailing journalists a memo headed "Obama's Iraq Plan: Just Words":
"Once again, it looks like Senator Obama is telling voters one thing while his campaign says those words should not to be mistaken for serious action...
"Senator Obama has made hard end dates about Iraq a centerpiece of his campaign and has repeatedly attacked Senator Clinton for not being clear about her intentions with regard to troop withdrawal.
"It turns out those attacks and speeches were just words. And if you can't trust Senator Obama's words, what's left?"
His campaign fired back: "The Clinton campaign has publicly admitted that the only way they can still win this election is by tearing Barack Obama down. They have called their attacks the 'kitchen sink strategy'...The result has been a constant barrage of attacks about Senator Obama's record that they know full well aren't true. And yet they repeat them, over and over again, day after day, in an attempt to deceive the American people..."
Well said, word warriors. Those people taking notes are from the Republican swiftboat squad, who will be happy to immortalize them, no matter which Democrat wins the nomination.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Bill Clinton's Bimbo Offensive
In attacking Barack Obama, the ex-President has gone past embarrassing into his own kind of seductive swiftboating.
Is there any difference in twisting the record of someone who opposed the Iraq war from Day One on behalf of an opponent who voted for it from smearing a man who fought and bled in Vietnam to benefit someone who dodged serving there?
More and more leading Democrats, including John Kerry, are complaining, but perhaps even worse than the cheap politics to which Bill Clinton has lowered himself is the insult of treating voters as too stupid to see through what he is doing--of wooing them like bimbos who will swallow anything.
In our sound-bite age, all politicians invert the truth occasionally, but it has become a modus operandi for the former President who once explained his distortions in the 1996 election to opponent Bob Dole with a smiling, "You gotta do what you gotta do."
Now, when political figures and reporters comment on his behavior, Bill Clinton gets testy as he did with a CNN correspondent who raised a question that led a former South Carolina Democratic chairman to compare his attacks to those of Lee Atwater, Karl Rove's mentor. "Shame on you," the prospective First Spouse says.
The ex-President must be even less charmed by ABC News' Jake Tapper's exegesis of how both Clintons tortured Obama's words about Ronald Reagan in a Las Vegas interview into meanings that were clearly not there.
But Bill Clinton seems exhilarated by it all. "I know you think it's crazy," he told a South Carolina crowd, "but I kind of like to see Barack and Hillary fight. They're flesh and blood people and they have their differences--let them have it."
The Clintons are letting Barack Obama "have it" with a truthiness that would make George W. Bush blush. As someone whom most Americans once respected and many admired said recently on the campaign trail, "Give us a break!"
Is there any difference in twisting the record of someone who opposed the Iraq war from Day One on behalf of an opponent who voted for it from smearing a man who fought and bled in Vietnam to benefit someone who dodged serving there?
More and more leading Democrats, including John Kerry, are complaining, but perhaps even worse than the cheap politics to which Bill Clinton has lowered himself is the insult of treating voters as too stupid to see through what he is doing--of wooing them like bimbos who will swallow anything.
In our sound-bite age, all politicians invert the truth occasionally, but it has become a modus operandi for the former President who once explained his distortions in the 1996 election to opponent Bob Dole with a smiling, "You gotta do what you gotta do."
Now, when political figures and reporters comment on his behavior, Bill Clinton gets testy as he did with a CNN correspondent who raised a question that led a former South Carolina Democratic chairman to compare his attacks to those of Lee Atwater, Karl Rove's mentor. "Shame on you," the prospective First Spouse says.
The ex-President must be even less charmed by ABC News' Jake Tapper's exegesis of how both Clintons tortured Obama's words about Ronald Reagan in a Las Vegas interview into meanings that were clearly not there.
But Bill Clinton seems exhilarated by it all. "I know you think it's crazy," he told a South Carolina crowd, "but I kind of like to see Barack and Hillary fight. They're flesh and blood people and they have their differences--let them have it."
The Clintons are letting Barack Obama "have it" with a truthiness that would make George W. Bush blush. As someone whom most Americans once respected and many admired said recently on the campaign trail, "Give us a break!"
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