It’s Getting Crowded Under the Bus
18 September 2007 12:24 am by Taylor Marsh
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Uh-oh. It looks like Jane
Hamsher will have to write another letter. Because some leading Democrats just don’t know how serious the situation is right now. Some don’t understand that running an ad screaming for action is nothing compared to what could happen later if everyone sits silently by waiting for change that never comes.
Last night Mr. Obama decided to join Elizabeth
Edwards and the wingnuts over the MoveOn.org ad. Hey, but since Brian Williams
stacked the set up, Obama simply couldn’t be bothered (or didn’t want to try) to find his way through
to the nut of the issue any more than Mrs. Edwards could last weekend.
BRIAN WILLIAMS: The MoveOn ad, General Betray-Us? Do you think it’s counter
productive?BARACK OBAMA: You know, I probably, if they had asked me, would have suggested
that we focus attention on George Bush, the commander in chief. I mean, my
assessment is that General Petraeus is playing a bad hand as well as he can.
Well, Mr. Obama, there’s a reason MoveOn.org doesn’t ask you for strategy.
Scouring the kingdom for a spine, Arianna
Huffington nails this one.
There’s a lesson in this for Obama and the Edwardses, but also for other Democrats
who just don’t get what MoveOn.org accomplished with their daring. They expanded the conversation and blew out the parameters so that we
could bring on the facts about the actual violence in Iraq, as well
as what wasn’t being accomplished during a time when Mr. Bush was parading
General Petraeus in front of the public as his credibility shield because he
no longer has any himself. Bush was betting no one would question anything the
general said because he was, well, a general. With one single newspaper ad MoveOn.org
accomplished what no Democrat in Congress has been able (or willing) to do in all of these months:
challenge the war propaganda being paraded in front of the public. The same cowardice that got us into this mess has been on parade. The shame and unseemliness of using a highly decorated military man for political purposes is lost
on some people, though not on many in the military.
Thankfully, there’s at least one member of the Republican Party who is willing
to truly stick up for the military. This is from last Friday’s Real Time with
Bill Maher appearance by Sen. Chuck Hagel:Maher: “Isn’t a dirty trick on the American people when you
send a military man out there to basically do a political sell-job?”Hagel: It’s not only a dirty trick, but it’s dishonest, it’s hypocritical,
it’s dangerous and irresponsible. The fact is this is not Petraeus’ policy;
it’s Bush’s policy. The military is — certainly very clear in the Constitution
— is subservient to the elected public officials of this country… but
to put our military in a position that this administration has put them
in is just wrong, and it’s dangerous.”Someone should put that in an ad.
Dept.
of Misdirection: With Iraq a Disaster, GOP Goes Crazy Over a Newspaper Ad
Again, you don’t have
to agree with the MoveOn.org ad, but considering the stakes in Iraq and
the unmitigated crap we’re being spoon fed from the White House, I would hope any outrage
would be pointed where it belongs: George W. Bush. You know, the man Republicans are now flocking back to in droves. Talk about lemmings and losers.
The closer Republicans get to George W. Bush for the ‘08 election the better
Democrats will look. Get it? It’s a gift.
And just for the record, the only one of the three frontrunners refusing to
cave in to the wingnut spin is none other than Hillary
Clinton, the one person more vilified than Obama and the Edwardes combined.
Hillary Clinton knows what it means to be the target of wingnut attacks and
she has no intention of falling prey to their trap. She remembers and learned
well from the 1990s, where if she had caved as the wingnuts wanted and planned
it is quite possible that Bill Clinton would have been done in by a consensual
sexual affair. Think about what Bush has gotten away with and the thought of
such a thing now seems completely impossible. For those of us who wrote about
the Lewinski brouhaha, I assure you it was not. In fact, given the cave in of
both the Obama and Edwards camps on the MoveOn.org ad, I can imagine Obama and maybe even John
Edwards giving a Lieberman style speech of moral indignation on the Senate floor.
As for Hillary Clinton, not even when attacked by Rudy did she cave. This is after she also not only sent Howard Wolfson out to defend YearlyKos
on Bill O’Reilly, but she also has turned every single question about the MoveOn.org
ad back into the face of the Republicans and Bush where it belongs. That says
a lot about her. It also could be the reason Obama and Edwards
can’t catch her.
