Posted on 02/22/2007 6:50:55 PM PST by neverdem
POLITISCOPE
Clinton Faces (Not So) Friendly Fire
By John Mercurio, NationalJournal.com
© National Journal Group Inc.
Thursday, Feb. 22, 2007
Take a good, hard look at Bill Clinton. When the 2008 Democratic primary is over, the former president (and would-be first husband) might look a lot different.
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The battle between Bill Clinton's wife and Barack Obama could have a far-reaching impact on the former president's long-term legacy. |
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Since the earliest days of his first term, Clinton has been a favorite GOP piñata and fundraising tool. But for the first time since he entered the White House in 1992, Clinton's record as president will be openly scrutinized, dissected -- and yes, criticized -- in a Democratic primary. That race, especially the battle between his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., could have a far-reaching impact on the former president's long-term legacy, particularly among two crucial groups of voters: women and blacks.
In some ways, Bill Clinton has only his wife to blame for such threats to his legacy. After all, he is (arguably) a semi-innocent bystander in his wife's brewing fight, the indirect target of anti-Hillary salvos fired by Democratic rivals, who can justify their criticisms by noting her efforts to own policy achievements compiled by her husband's administration.
Such critiques could come at great risk in a party still overflowing with adoring Clinton fans. But strategists from opposing camps believe it's a deep quiver from which to launch arrows, as long as those arrows are carefully chosen and fired with precision. Democrats may be unlikely to accept criticisms of Clinton's record on the economy or civil rights, for example, but they're willing to consider challenges on issues like campaign finance, health care, ethics, some aspects of foreign policy and, of course, his personal behavior.
"It's been papered over for a while. But disagreements have been there since day one," one Obama strategist said this week. "This is a fight some Democrats have wanted to have for years."
The earliest and most aggressive practitioner of this tactic has probably been former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., who partly blames faulty WMD intelligence from the Clinton administration for his "wrong" vote authorizing the Iraq war in 2002. "I went back to former Clinton administration officials who gave me sort of independent information about what they believed about what was happening with Saddam's weapons programs. They were also wrong," Edwards said Feb. 4 on NBC's "Meet the Press." "And based on that, I made the wrong judgment."
But the most blatant example erupted Wednesday when Clinton's camp was drawn into a feisty tussle with Clinton-turned-Obama supporter David Geffen, who decried the political dynasties that have run the country for the past 18 years. (Geffen's relations with the Clintons soured in early 2001, when the president refused to pardon American Indian activist Leonard Peltier, a convicted murderer of two FBI agents.)
In an interview with the New York Times' Maureen Dowd, Geffen, a member of Obama's finance team who co-sponsored a glitzy Beverly Hills fundraiser for him Tuesday night, said he's supporting Obama because he's "inspirational" and "he's not from the Bush royal family or the Clinton royal family.... I'm tired of hearing James Carville on television." (Subscription Required)
He said the Clintons lie "with such ease, it's troubling."
Geffen also hit Bill Clinton below the belt. "I don't think anybody believes that in the last six years, all of a sudden Bill Clinton has become a different person," he said in a thinly veiled reference to Clinton's personal indiscretions.
Hillary Clinton's campaign hit back, hard and fast, calling Geffen's remarks a "slash and burn" slam on the senator "and her family" that Obama should repudiate. "While Sen. Obama was denouncing slash and burn politics yesterday, his campaign's finance chair was viciously and personally attacking Senator Clinton and her husband," said Clinton campaign communications director Howard Wolfson.
Camp Obama was only too delighted to turn up the volume. "We aren't going to get in the middle of a disagreement between the Clintons and someone who was once one of their biggest supporters," Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs fired back. "It is ironic that the Clintons had no problem with David Geffen when he was raising them $18 million and sleeping at their invitation in the Lincoln Bedroom."
The spat, played out in a series of statements released to the media, continued.
Other Democratic candidates have taken a different tack, attempting to criticize Hillary while praising Bill and, in doing so, trying to put some distance between the two Clinton legacies. Perhaps no one is more motivated to follow this strategy than New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, the only former Clinton Cabinet member in the 2008 race. His decision to run suggests he doesn't feel particular loyalty to either Clinton and indicates he may feel free to throw barbs her way. He said recently that while he has great respect for Bill Clinton and worked well with him in various administration posts, he was never personally close to Hillary.
"And I do know cases where he is calling individuals who he thought were supporting Sen. Clinton, and they're supporting me," Richardson told the Albuquerque Tribune this month.
For her part, Clinton on Wednesday personally chose to respond to Geffen by, well, standing by her man. "You know, I believe Bill Clinton was a good president," she said in Nevada, to cheering applause from an audience of union members. "I'm very proud of the record of his two terms."
-- John Mercurio is a NationalJournal.com contributing writer and a senior editor of The Hotline. His e-mail address is jmercurio@nationaljournal.com.
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The Clintons have too much dirt on them and they have made too many enemies among "their own". They have used and abused and thrown away too many of their own. That and her Marxist rhetoric. Businesses, the medical profession, et. al. will go against her.
Geffen became a tightwad at the wrong time. That is the "scruples" involved.
This is just getting started. There are thousands who have been knifed in the back by the Clintons who are going to start coming out of the woodwork. This is going to get some play because the MSM isn't completely sold on Hillary being able to win. While a portion of the MSM will be cheerleaders for Clinton like Couric and Dowd, there appears to be many who are going to look for the slightest weakness to dump on her. Hillary is in trouble if the hollyweirders who loved Bill so much are starting to back Obama.
It would take a battalion of flame throwers to burn out the scum of this bunch.
Someone needs to bring up Leonard Peltier to Obama and how he would respond to a request to pardon him from his Campaign Finance Chair (Geffen).
Clintons have a lot of dirt on many people, but Bill has been out of office for over 6 years now. Their files are getting old and they can't order the CIA and FBI to give them whatever they want anymore.
There is alot of new blood that they can't blackmail so easily.
Yep, thats probably what it was. Not enough tribute kicked up .......
Pardon me (pun intended :-) for musing that it might have been due to moral concience.
/laughs
If there weren't so many Puerto Rican voters in NY. State, He never would have pardoned those P.R. terrorists.
See, 18 million dollars raised by Geffen wasn't worth one AIM killer getting freed, but all those Puerto Rican votes were priceless when it came to getting Hillary Elected. (in XXXlintigula Incorporated's thinking, not mine.)
And, whether they admit it or not, a lot of libs really realize the Clintons are sleezy, low life swine.One reason some of the libs hate George Bush is they see a decent man replacing their pigly scum bag.
"No more Clinton's Please!!!!!.............."
Geffen made a really good point.
No more Clintons and their cronies.
AND no more Bushes and THEIR cronies.
16 years of them is enough.
It is as Oliver Cromwell cried out when he bade the Long Parliament to dissolve itself:
"You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go."
Hillary's biggest problem now is that Obama just showed the world she puts that crusty old pantsuit on one leg at a time like the rest of us. A huge part of her campaign was the aura of invincibility and inevitability she had built up, with her name and her connections and her war chest and her taste for gutter-level politics and character assassination.
Obama just blew that to shreds by scooping up one of the crown jewels of democrat campaigning, and he did it without even breaking a sweat. Hillary's got to get back on top fast, and stop the bleeding like yesterday. Otherwise, the rumbling that's already going on in the media about her not being able to win will just get louder, and they'll start to bail on her. And if she loses the media, she's beyond dead.
Hahahahhaaa ... get used to it, because its a gonna be Clinton Clinton Clinton Clinton Clinton for then next two years. They won't fade away all that easily in this overhyped Clinton media frenzied socio/political environment
No, hillary hatemaster doesn't want any politics of personal destruction. But her goons are sent immediately out to slaughter this feckless liberal who dared to revolt against her ascension to the throne of the white whore house.
OMG!!!!! That is the funniest thing I've seen since that clinton opera that was posted on FR at least a decade ago. What was the name of that? I have to search my hard drive for it.
Wait, I remember, it was Scumbaggio!
This is gonna be a hoot! Instead of Hillary Clinton for President, it should be...
VOTE FOR BILL CLINTON'S WIFE
or
Eye Heart Hillary Tree Notes!
Semper Fi,
bump to read later
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