Sometimes you need a splitter.
Posted on 01/29/2008 7:54:57 AM PST by fweingart
Ted and niece Caroline Kennedy turned back on long history with Clintons, including a sailing jaunt that included Bill, Hil and Ted and son Patrick in 1997. Et tu, Teddy?
America's liberal icon Ted Kennedy tossed old chums Bill and Hillary Clinton overboard Monday, after plunging a knife into the former First Couple as he abandoned them in favor of alluring newcomer Barack Obama.
"I am proud to stand here today and offer my help, my voice, my energy and my commitment to make Barack Obama the next President of the United States," Kennedy told a crowd of 5,500 at American University in Washington.
The king of the Kennedy clan was joined by his son Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) and his niece and JFK scion Caroline Kennedy in handing the mantle of Camelot to Obama.
It was a stunning desertion of a decades-long relationship between the patriarch of a political dynasty and the husband-wife tandem of an emerging one, prompting some Clinton supporters to cast Kennedy as Benedict Arnold.
Sources said Kennedy's repudiation was sparked by the bitter racial divide that erupted in South Carolina - a flap for which Kennedy blamed Bill Clinton. Even personal pleas from Bill Clinton, which sources characterized as heated, couldn't persuade Kennedy to stay neutral. He was one of the party titans who had unsuccessfully urged Bubba to cool his fiery anti-Obama rhetoric.
"With Barack Obama, we will turn the page on the old politics of misrepresentation and distortion," Kennedy said in a nameless, yet unmistakable, dig at the Clintons.
Friends of both men remembered how Bill Clinton and John F. Kennedy Jr. got choked up as they comforted each other after Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' death in 1994. And a teenage Bill Clinton is famously photographed shaking President John F. Kennedy's hand in the Rose Garden.
After Clinton became President, he and Hillary spent summer days sailing with the Kennedys around Martha's Vineyard, and Bill appointed Jean Kennedy Smith, Ted's sister, ambassador to Ireland, the family's ancestral home.
And when John F. Kennedy Jr. died in a plane crash off the Vineyard in 1999, it was Bill Clinton who kept the Navy and Coast Guard searching for days to find his body - at a cost of millions.
That history wasn't enough for Ted Kennedy, who felt the Clintons twisted Obama's record by calling his Iraq stance a "fairy tale" and belittling Obama's strength in South Carolina as race-based.
"We know the true record of Barack Obama - there is the courage," Kennedy said. "When so many others were silent or simply went along from the beginning, he opposed the war in Iraq - and let no one deny that truth."
Team Clinton downplayed the stinging abandonment, saying it's just another endorsement in a list of many for both candidates that ultimately will make little difference. Hillary Clinton's campaign also highlighted her endorsement by Robert F. Kennedy's children.
Hillary Clinton has appeared chastened, appealing to her supporters, even Bill, to tone done the rancor. Yesterday, as she stumped on Kennedy turf in Springfield, Mass., she didn't mention him or Obama.
But the New York chapter of the National Organization for Women, which backs Clinton, was out for blood. Chapter chief Marcia Pappas ripped Kennedy for the "ultimate betrayal" of women.
"He's picked the new guy over us. He's joined the list of progressive white men who can't or won't handle the prospect of a woman President," Pappas said in a statement unvetted by the Clinton campaign. The national NOW office said it had "respect" for Kennedy's endorsement.
Kennedys are a different kind of trash.
The Dem establishment is just mad because the Clintons are using the wrong kind of race baiting. Democrats’ stock in trade has been to foment discontent among minorities, to unite them in their common resentment of whites. The Clintons are upsetting this scheme by pitting black against brown.
OK by me....I’m writing in Fred Thompson!
I still am amazed at the amount of ink all of these demented individuals garner! I wish they would all just fade away!
Hearing Ted Kennedy on Laura Ingraham right now talking about how we need a “uniter” for a “United States”.
What has he done to reach out to Republicans in flyover country?
crickets.
That’s a waste of a perfectly good vote.
clinocchio knows how to connect with the Archie Bunker Democrats. He’ll find them. This is NOT over. The beast is still the favorite.
Sometimes you need a splitter.
A vote for Fred is a vote for McCain.
What did you suppose Fatboy asked from Obama for his idiot son?
He won the Chappaquiddick long distance swimming championship.
The American voter will see only a small shade of philosphical difference between the GOP candidate and Obama, especially once the GOP's message is tainted by the mainstream media. No GOP candiate has the charisma or credibility to convince America that he will take us in a new direction from the moderates that were voted out in '06, or the Dems currently in power. Moreover, conservatives will not turn out and work for Romney/McCain, especially since Hillary will not be the Dem candidate.
I see this election as all but over. Obama and his accomplices in congress will have to teach this country another lesson in misery, and then another Reagan will have to step forward, before we can begin to crawl out of the economic hole we're about to fall into.
This nation is being positioned (not on purpose by the left-wing haters of America) for a real revolution.
Many of us have tried every means open to us to bring about change in our government and nothing has worked!
The nation will be in line for real turmoil thanks to an utterly worthless congress.
Kennedy will do anything to make himself seem politically relevant. The younger crop of Kennedys is for the most part, inferior, and unlikely to make much of an political impact.
Don’t expect anything high-minded from the morons who make up the rank and file of Democrat voters (or from their leaders either). These people just can’t get enough of bilge.
***Sources said Kennedy’s repudiation was sparked by the bitter racial divide that erupted in South Carolina - a flap for which Kennedy blamed Bill Clinton. Even personal pleas from Bill Clinton, which sources characterized as heated, couldn’t persuade Kennedy to stay neutral. He was one of the party titans who had unsuccessfully urged Bubba to cool his fiery anti-Obama rhetoric.***
TRANSLATION:
Ted waited for the precise moment in the campaign to dump Hitlery and Bill gave him the excuse he was waiting for. Obama has promised him more AND Ted sees HItlery slipping.
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