Posted on 10/18/2006 12:56:06 PM PDT by Sub-Driver
Clinton urges Dems to question criticism
By PHILIP ELLIOTT, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 12 minutes ago
Former President Clinton bemoaned ideologues who describe opponents as "running for office on his or her way to hell" and urged Democrats not to shy from fighting back.
Clinton, criticizing Republicans weeks before the midterm elections, told an audience at Georgetown University on Wednesday that intellectual debate should trump partisan rancor and either-or choices are false.
"Most of us long for politics where we have genuine arguments, vigorous disagreements but we don't claim to have the whole truth and we don't demonize our opponents and we work for what's best for the American people," he said.
Clinton, whose wife Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., is eyeing a 2008 White House run, spoke at his alma mater to mark the 15th anniversary of his series of speeches there as a then-fledgling presidential candidate. The former president gave notice that Democrats would not be passive victims of attacks.
"This is a contact sport, politics," he said. "You can't complain about being attacked. It's like Yao Ming complaining about being fouled playing basketball."
Clinton said he doesn't see Democrats shying from the debate.
"It's not that we want a bland, mushy, meaningless politics," he said. "We like our debate. ... We understand that campaigns will be heated and only one side can win. But we want it to be connected somehow to real lives and real people, to aspirations of ordinary Americans to the future of our children and our grandchildren."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
This shows how out of touch and irrelevant Clinton has become to the Democrats. Besides if Democrats started getting into intellectual debates, they'd lose.
Perhaps I should get my hearing checked because 90% of criticism I hear is of republicans.
Either you want to fight the WOT as a war, or as a law enforcement action. Is he willing to have an intellectual debate about that?
democRATS & truth should NOT be in the same article.
Now, that's comedy.
Clinton criticizing partisan politics is like Pol Pot criticizing genocide.
Said the man who walkd out of his press conference when he denied and then confessed that he had an ongoing affair with the busty little intern.
This from the same people who use private investigators and thugs to intimidate and harrass all those who speak out against them. Especially woman formerly man-handled by Bubba.
I'd say your hearing is fine. I have 2 digital hearing aids, and I hear the same things.
Exactly. They'd rather stifle speech rather than engage it.
How can you have intellectual debates with Demoncrats when every word is "f***", and every other word is "Bush"?
Dem'crats are shy about fighting back? Not in a political fight. That is their very life's blood, and the reason they get up in the morning. And the dirtier the tactic, the more twisted the strategies, the better it is. What the heck, this can be better than sex, and the sensation lasts longer, too. Sometimes, they are just too smart by half, and more often than any Dem'crat would ever care to admit, their own blunders end up hurting themselves more than they do their Republican rivals.
But nobody walks away.
I second that GOOD GRIEF with a HOLY COW! THIS from a man who had a massive temper tantrum on TV just a few weeks ago over nothing? The "reality party" is even more divorced from reality than I believed, and that's saying a lot.
Add to that: about 95% of all criticism is against President Bush and Republicans as it is.
And don't forget that Her Royal Thighness knew of the detectives and approved.
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