Richard Cohen: Conservatives Will Buy Anything [Ed Klein's Book is one example]

realclearpolitics ^ | 07/15/2014 | Richard Cohen

[SeekAndFind]

They had a term for her, but I've forgotten it. It was a name applied to a person who could not say no to a door-to-door salesman. The one I remember from my brief career selling magazines was totally upfront about her intentions. "I'll buy whatever you're selling," she said.

I sold her Esquire and two other subscriptions. Salesmen back then had a name for such people. Today, I would call them conservatives. They, too, will buy anything.

The current evidence for this is Edward Klein's latest book, "Blood Feud: The Clintons vs. the Obamas." It has just jumped over Hillary Clinton's own book, "Hard Choices," on The New York Times best-seller list and zoomed past it on Amazon. The problem with Clinton's book is that it doggedly presents her as she really is. The virtue of Klein's book is that it presents a Hillary Clinton who is a right-winger's harridan, obscene, dishonest and likely to say the most astonishing things. You did not know, probably, how foul-mouthed and indiscreet she is.

Not too many pages into the book, Hillary purportedly tells a reunion of college friends what she really thinks of Barack Obama. The time is May 2013, the location is a Westchester County restaurant called Le Jardin du Roi, and the wines are Chateau Hyot Castillon Cotes de Bordeaux and Croix de Basson, cheap stuff. Obama, Clinton tells about half a dozen women, "has turned into a joke." "Incompetent and feckless," she adds.

And then, with the wine possibly loosening her tongue, she does a spot-on imitation of my basic training drill sergeant. There's "no hand on the [censored] tiller." "And you can't trust the [censored]" because "his word isn't worth [censored]."

[Stosh]

This from a butthead who bought into 8 years of “hope and change”.

[tflabo]

So Hellary’s book isn’t selling because conservatives aren’t buying? Mmmmmm... dont they accuse backwater conservatives of being dumb, unlearned and neanderthals—the kind that don’t read books? Soooooo confusing.....

[CaptainMorgantown]

Actually, the purpose of Ed Klein’s book is not to delight conservatives with reports of backroom feud’s in the Obama administration.

The purpose is to start the drumbeat that there is “separation” between Clinton and Obama. That even though she was his Secretary of State and co-author of his utterly disastrous foreign policy, and even though she has not uttered a word of public criticism of his failed economic policies or radical social policies or rampant corruption and incompetence, that somehow a Clinton administration would be completely different.

[Leroy S. Mort]

Here's Richard Cohen writing in 2008:

Obama's campaign showed us a candidate of maximum cool. He has always remained ironically detached and that has served him -- and now us -- very well indeed. It's now clear that he will not govern from the left and not really from the center but, as his campaign suggested, from above it all.

Now tell us again - Who will "buy anything"?

[Gumdrop]

I’m not into photo-ops is another one.

[ozzymandus]

“Just jumped over Hillary’s book”?? How about “buried Hillary’s book”? I’m guessing Richard’s own book sales were not impressive, and his jealousy is showing.

[gusopol3]

Good one, and current.

[o-n-money]

The people that pay attenion know Hillary and this book is superfluous.

[elcid1970]

Who cares what this PW’d blue rinsed little man thinks?

[ansel12]

It was a name applied to a person who could not say no to a door-to-door salesman.

We used to call them "mullets".

[hinckley buzzard]

Richard Cohen has been lurking around the beltway so long his suck pieces are turning gray.