The Empire Strikes Back
February 24th, 2008 at 05:36am Mark Noonan
We’ll see if a harsher Hillary can derail Barack Obama:
DAYTON, Ohio — Sen. Hillary Clinton ratcheted up her attacks on Sen. Barack Obama today, comparing his campaign tactics to those of George W. Bush and urging Ohioans to see past his momentum.
“Enough with the speeches and the big rallies and then using tactics that are right out of Karl Rove’s playbook,” Mrs. Clinton told reporters at a press conference today.
She clutched two negative fliers sent to Ohio voters by the Obama campaign that she says make false claims about her position on health care and trade agreements. “Shame on you Barack Obama. It is time you ran a campaign that is consistent with your messages in public. That’s what I expect from you,” Mrs. Clinton said.
Mr. Obama quickly fired back. “These are accurate,” he said of the fliers. He also accused his rival of hypocrisy in denouncing the negative campaigning. “We have been subject to constant attack from the Clinton campaign, except when we were down 20 points. And that was true in Iowa. It was true in South Carolina. It was true in Wisconsin. And it is true now.”
He also questioned why Sen. Clinton raised the issue of the fliers now, weeks after they were first mailed to Ohio voters. “It makes me think there was something tactical about her getting so exercised this morning,” he said at a campaign stop in Columbus, Ohio.
The tone used in today’s exchange marks a sharp contrast to the cordial vibe that dominated the debate between the two candidates on Thursday.
Will it work? The smart money would say, “no” - but you never can tell with the Clintons. Funny as it is for us on the right to have a Clinton complaining of Rove-like tactics (as if it weren’t Democrats who invented the politics of personal destruction), the plain fact of the matter is that Obama is vulnerable on ethics, positions and tactics to a broadside from Clinton, Inc. Whether or not such an attack will stick - or at least stick enough to secure Texas and Ohio for Hillary - remains to be seen.
UPDATE: FactCheck calls the mailers “misleading.”
Entry Filed under: Campaign 2008, Democrats
10 Comments
1. plainjane | February 24th, 2008 at 6:59 am
Ohio and Texas just might be her last stand. All the stuff mentioned is pretty tame stuff. She is not accusing Obama of having a white baby with someone not his wife as in the 2000 Repug primary, or betraying his country by keeping Hussein as his middle name. Antics like this will come from wingnuts in the general election.
2. Christian Wright | February 24th, 2008 at 8:11 am
The nice thing about the attacks on Obama by Clinton is that is warms him up for the attacks that are coming from McCain, FOX, and the right wing.
3. Christian Wright | February 24th, 2008 at 8:17 am
Deleted - off topic.
4. MagicalPat | February 24th, 2008 at 9:28 am
I watched Hillary’s “Shame on you Barack Obama” video and here’s my take: It will go down as her Howard Dean scream moment. It is Hillary at her most shrill and harsh.
5. PoetryInMotion | February 24th, 2008 at 9:34 am
Sooooo, now Hitlery’s comparing Earbama with Bush, as the rest of the loony left compare McCain with Bush.
I’ll throw a party if Shrillary loses to Earbama…
6. JPL | February 24th, 2008 at 10:39 am
Mark — Your “Star Wars” reference is perfect, because Hillary’s telling voters that “Obama is Bush” is so patently ridiculous, it comes across like Obi Wan’s Jedi Mind-Control Trick, where he tells the weak-minded Empire guards, “These are not the droids you are looking for.” She must hope voters will be equally weak-minded and think, “This [Obama] is not the Messiah we are looking for. He is Bush.” It suggests that her campaign is desperate and bankrupt of ideas.
7. Almiranta | February 24th, 2008 at 11:38 am
I just loveloveloveloveLOVE it when hysterical Dems refer to accurate representations of their positions, when such references don’t happen to seem beneficial to them at the time, as “attacks”.
It’s like their hijacking of the term “swiftboating”, which they have, in their typical Orwellian fashion, redefined to mean making false attacks on someone, when in fact it is and always has been a reference to correcting false statements by introducing truth.
And janie, you simply MUST start to figure out some way to discern what people mean by examining what they actually say. Well, I guess if your goal is to remain part of the rabid Left, such a skill might be an impediment to rising within the movement. But it is something that other people value, and something you apparently have never grasped.
NO ONE has accused Obama of “…betraying his country by keeping Hussein as his middle name..” Where do you people GET this stuff?
You hear people acknowledge that Hussein is the middle name of Barack Obama. Fact. You then seem to feel fully justified in flying off into LeftyLand invention, where you assume that this acknowledgment is a complaint that he has not renounced this name, and/or that it represents treason to the United States of America.
Sheer foolishness, sheer invention, and sheer lunacy. In other words, the very stuff of which plainjane’s comments are always made.
8. Kahn | February 24th, 2008 at 11:42 am
CW said - “stupid enough to believe what you see on FOX”
You mean the network studies show to be the most fair? Even Hillary Clinton says this.
CBS - used FORGED documents to attack Bush.
NBC OPENLY states their support for Obama.
PBS/NPR shared donor lists with the Democrats multiple times.
Your examples?
9. Kahn | February 24th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
This isn’t mine - I’ll give the link to Mark if asked.
Examples of Liberal Style
The style of a liberal often includes these characteristics:
1. insistence on having the last word in a discussion or debate, or last wordism
2. attempting to portray conservatives as callous or uncaring; bait them into making insensitive remarks; falsely describing them as angry
3. calling others “extremist”
4. deny the obvious and embrace the implausible; see examples of liberal denial
5. attempting to appear smarter than others, when often the opposite is true
6. attempting to appear more reasonable than others, when often the opposite is true
7. overreliance on hearsay, such as the false claim that most support evolution
8. unjustified praise of atheists and other liberals as “geniuses”, despite little achievement
9. denial of accountability
10. believing that bureaucratic honors or appointments are meaningful achievements, as fights over political office
11. insisting on a mindless equality, as in “if you have an entry for Beethoven, then you must allow entries for vulgar rap artists!”
12. concealing one’s liberal views rather than admitting them
13. calling conservative free speech “hate” speech
14. calling conservative humor “unprofessional and meaningless, and degrades the quality of your encyclopedia.”
15. pretending to know more than he does; Isaac Newton admitted that he knew almost nothing, yet a liberal rarely admits that and often pretends to know more than he does
16. resistance to quantifying things, such as liberal bias or openmindedness
17. preference for obscenity and profanity
18. over-reliance on mockery
19. over-reliance on accusations of hypocrisy
20. hostility to faith
21. insistence on censoring certain speech, such as a description of The Flood or even teaching children about a massive flood, despite its acceptance by a majority of Americans
22. believing that the education of children is for liberals to control
23. believing that conservatives will fail, and refusing to accept when they succeed, as when George W. Bush won in 2000
24. reluctance to admit that anything is morally wrong
25. bullying conservatives who disagree with liberal views
26. draw an analogy between opponents and racists, no matter how illogical
27. claim that science supports their position, and ignore any evidence that shows their position to be false
28. often declare that an adversary should be “ashamed of himself,” while never saying that about a fellow liberal (such as Ted Kennedy or Bill Clinton)
10. Almiranta | February 24th, 2008 at 7:24 pm
Kahn, your list is very comprehensive, and I have to agree with most of it, if not all.
I tend to see Liberal style in broader, less specific terms.
To me, one of the most glaring characterstics is the belief that Liberal philosophies convey a higher moral sense. I think this is why they are so comfortable just mounting attack after attack, even when it means repeating known lies—they are justified, you see, because they are right and the other guy is wrong.
The Left concentrates very strongly on establishing a We vs They mentality. And, of course, the Theys are Others, and deserve whatever they get. So what if the claims are false, the accusations known lies, the smears baseless? It is the self-anointed Good Guys attacking the Others, so it’s OK.
Just look at the vile posts we see here, from the radical Left. It’s attack after attack, nastiness after nastiness, debunked lie after debunked lie. But it’s OK, because it is in the pursuit of defeating the Others.
Who are, of course, evil.
It is this Victim vs Villain paradigm that marks so much of the approach of the radical Left. They are the Victims (or represent the Victims..) and the Others are the Villains.
It is a philosphy of Divide and Conquer—turn blacks against whites, Latinos against blacks and whites, atheists against those of faith, and so on.
And it is a philophy of the collective vs the individual. Conservatives have trouble grasping the mentality of the Left, are baffled by the terminology that seems so much a part of Liberalism—the identification of GROUPS. While conservatives tend to see people as individuals, the Left, showing its collective mentality, sees it differently. Note the constant use, on the Left, of the term “community”—the “black community”, the “gay community” and so on. Conservatives just don’t lump people together like that, and therefore are ambushed when a specific instance, involving a specific individual, is spun by the Left to include all who are, according to the collective mentality, part of that individual’s “community”.
If I don’t like my gay neighbor, I have insulted the entire “gay community”. If I have a problem with a specific black person, I have a problem with the “black community”. To pursue this end, the Left will attach its own motive to any act, so that a rebuke to a rude gay neighbor becomes homophobic and based on hatred of gays in general, etc.
The Left goes so far as to desire, and try to implement, Thought Crimes, in which the determination of what the person was thinking or feeling as he commits a crime weighs on the penalty.
I have come to think that the Left does not impose this view on people as much as attract people prone to thinking that way. It seems to be a basic difference in the way people view the world.
It was fascinating to start reading Thomas Sowell’s great work, “A Conflict of Visions” last week. He explains these conflicts far better than I ever could, and I strongly recommend the book to everyone. To everyone, that is, who has a sincere interest in understanding basic differences among people without attaching value judgments to those differences.
And then the political affilations follow the basic differences in the way people view the world.