Obama Swallows Prince of Darkness Swill
17 November 2007 10:54 am by Taylor Marsh
I guess after Thursday’s pounding, Mr. Obama and his team are ready to grasp at anything. We’ve now entered the moment where leading Democrats would rather listen to right-wing rants than give the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination the benefit of the doubt. Not very impressive on Mr. Obama’s part, I must say.
The guy who dropped a dime on a covert CIA operative is back and Mr. Obama
is buying into his baloney. The conservative cauldron is sure bubbling today.
Question is why is anyone paying attention to this guy?
Agents of Sen. Hillary Clinton are spreading the word in Democratic circles
that she has scandalous information about her principal opponent for the party’s
presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama, but has decided not to use it.
The nature of the alleged scandal was not disclosed. … ..
Yeah, yeah, Clinton agents are everywhere trying to destroy Obama. News flash to the ignorant: In case you hadn’t noticed Clinton is a little busy still trying to convince voters that she’s got answers to their problems. Her focus is not on Mr. Obama. It’s on you, the primary voters in Iowa, but far beyond Iowa as well. She doesn’t have a one-state primary strategy. Ya dig?
But let’s swallow Novak’s National Enquirer
gossip regurgitation in one gulp, shall we? Evidently, the Obama campaign needed a snack today.
“During our debate in Las Vegas on Thursday, we heard Senator Clinton
rail against the politics of ‘throwing mud.’“At the very same time, in Washington, Robert Novak was publishing a
column in which he reported the following: ‘Agents of Sen. Hillary Clinton
are spreading the word in Democratic circles that she has scandalous information
about her principal opponent for the party’s presidential nomination, Sen.
Barack Obama…’ … ..But in the interest of our party, and her own reputation, Senator Clinton
should either make public any and all information referred to in the item,
or concede the truth: that there is none. … ..
Excuse me, but there’s no proof whatsoever Novak has anything valid. Secondly,
why is Mr. Obama automatically firing at Clinton because of some screed from
the Prince of Darkness? How desperate is he anyway? But most importantly, Mr. Obama is impugning Hillary Clinton’s integrity based on an unattributed rumor in the opening paragraph of a syndicated column from a Republican operative. A man who was so mad that Joseph Wilson blew Mr. Bush out of the water on the Iraq war he was willing to out a covert CIA operative (who just so happened to be working on WMDs, let me add), in order to send a message across her husband’s bow.
Since when do
Democrats take the word of a Republican over a respected member of our own party?
From Howard Wolfson:
Once again Senator Obama is echoing Republican talking points, this time
from Bob Novak.This is how Republicans work.
A Republican-leaning journalist runs a blind item designed to set Democrats
against one another. Experienced Democrats see this for what it is. Others
get distracted and thrown off their games.Voters should be concerned about the readiness of any Democrat inexperienced
enough to fall for this.There is a campaign in this race that has engaged in the very practice that
Senator Obama is decrying, and it’s his.We have no idea what Mr. Novak’s item is about and reject it totally. Instead
of pointing fingers at us, Senator Obama should get back to the issues and
focus on what this election is really about.
This is exactly correct. It’s a blind item from a wingnut slipped into Saturday’s
media stream targeting Clinton — last time he targeted Valerie Plame Wilson
— in the belief that one of her opponents would gobble it up without chewing
it.
Another distraction targeting Clinton from the right-wing because they know
her opponents have no political impulse control and are so desperate, especially after Thursday’s
shellacking, that they’ll grab at anything; even if it hoists us all on some
wingnut petard.
UPDATE: Peter Daou, Clinton’s Internet director, has addressed the suckering of Obama by Novak, if that’s what it is. But given the track record it’s not wrong to wonder. Seriously, who’s actually swiftboating whom? It’s not like Mr. Obama and his team haven’t traveled in pushing this stuff themselves. I covered Obama’s “D-Punjab” smear of Clinton back at June that was also covered in the New York Times, as well as the smear on Bill Clinton that Politico covered in “Oppo Bounty.” Then there was his “oops” apology for it. There was also Obama’s team trying to dig up dirt at the Clinton library. Two more from Daou are below:
Obama communications director compiled list of opposition research stories on Hillary that he was pitching to reporters. “Lizza writes while visiting the office of Obama communications chief Robert Gibbs at the national headquarters on Michigan Avenue. ‘I couldn’t help but notice some of what he had scrawled on a whiteboard hanging on his wall: HC Bio › NY Post HC Travel (AP?) Tax Returns (Balz?) Darfur investments (HF) JE 527 HC is, of course, Hillary Clinton… These were obviously notes about stories the campaign was pushing or anticipating…’” [Chicago Sun-Times, 8/14/07] The Obama camp took credit for the attack on Hillary regarding Norman Hsu. “In August, Obama’s team scored a significant hit by helping to place a story in several newspapers revealing that Norman Hsu, a major Clinton donor, had skipped town after having pleaded no contest to a charge of grand theft 15 years earlier and still faced an outstanding warrant… (Hsu had also contributed to Obama.)” [Atlantic Monthly, 12/2007]
But let’s not forget Andrew Sullivan Marc Ambinder, who in the print copy of his Atlantic Monthly love letter to Obama offers this beauty: At a campaign event in Iowa, one of Obama’s aides plopped down next to me. He wanted to know when reporters would begin to look into Bill Clinton’s postpresidential sex life. The part in bold was in red in the print edition. Funny how it didn’t make it in the online posting. (Thanks to reader JoeCHI – Quoted correctly, but attributed the wrong article. Now corrected.)
The Clinton campaign has responded to yet another try from Obama’s team to make Novak’s charges stick (also in “>Daou’s update):
It’s telling that the Obama campaign would rather spend the day throwing mud in Bob Novak’s sandbox than talking about the issues.
Our statement was crystal clear: Democratic voters should be concerned about any Presidential candidate inexperienced enough to fall for Republican talking points. The Clinton campaign has nothing to do with this item.
