Shock and Awe: HRC Edition

By: Chris Guy
Published On: 2/16/2007 12:11:05 AM

NY Times Columnist David Brooks recently discovered the political equivalent of a child being told there's no Santa Claus....Hillary Clinton may not be completely full of crap. I hope other members of the media were sitting down when they read this. In related news, up is now down, cats chase dogs, and Virgil Goode is building a summer home in Riyadh.
When loudmouths like Chris Matthews and Rush Limbaugh constantly say she's stupid or a liar for thinking Bush would use the IWR for diplomatic leverage, it slowly, gradually morphs into fact. People think the explnation for her vote nowadays is her just trying to weasel her way out of apologizing.

Of course there are many excellent watchdog groups out there like Media Matters which has de-bunked dozens of myths regarding Sen. Clinton and revealed blatant anti-Hillary biases that the MSM accepts as fact. But for the average journalist, the idea of challenging lazy stereotypes is a foreign concept. I mean, who has time to fact check nowadays anyway?

So instead of just assuming that Hillary Clinton is "flip-flopping" or "pandering" or whatever popular political buzzwords everyone else uses, David Brooks actually did his homework. He discovered, (as if reading her 2002 speech on the floor of the Senate was like discovering the Dead Sea Scrolls) that her explanation of her war vote actually hasn't changed much in the past 4+ years.

"...I confess that until now, I've regarded her explanation as a transparent political dodge. Didn't everyone know this was a war resolution? But now, having investigated her public comments, I think diplomatic leverage really was on her mind. I also know, from a third person, that she was spending a lot of time with Powell and wanted to help."

Can you imagine how screwed the Right would be if the average American were more informed? To quote Stepen Colbert: "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

Comments



I'm glad to see favorable posts about Mrs. Clinton (demnan - 2/16/2007 10:54:06 AM)
for a change somewhere.  I like that Raising Kaine is not here to condemn but to support our Democratic candidates.

One thing we as Democrats need to remember.  If a Democrat had been in the White House, we would not have gone to this illegal war.  No intelligence would have been fabricated.  No one on our side plays that dirty!  So to blame the war on Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Edwards or anyone else on our side is wrong.  This war is all W's doing.



For anyone that has followed Senator Clinton.. (SaveElmer - 2/16/2007 11:27:12 AM)
And her record the last 6 years...this would not be a surprise...she has been consistent about her reasoning for her IWR vote all along...

I'm glad to see that the over the top criticism is finally inducing some to actually take a look at the facts...

In addition her voting record has been on the progressive side of the ledger, voting the party position 95% of the time. She gets top marks from civil rights, womens, environmental, and labor groups...

It saddens me to see so  many supposed Democrats are so willing to buy into this conventional wisdom about her...

Hopefully that is changing!



In response to yours and the comment before you (Used2Bneutral - 2/16/2007 1:54:03 PM)
I totally concur with your points and want to take this even further. We as Dems have to stop help to defeat ourselves. Having a brutal primary and even pre-primary battles between solid capable cadidates is not a winning solution.... we don't need to give our adversaries any help. If we keep to a positive tone and go for the issues that demonstrate the competence that most every cadidate that has announced so far has to offer we help everyone win. Most of all we don't need to give the Repugs anything like happened with the anti-semitantic cartoon BS that fed ammunition against Webb to the Allen campaign. There will be enough dirt flying with out any of us having help dig it up.  As said before, it is our responsibility to de-bunk and communicate to take away the slander and in-accurate accusations that can damage our chances at all levels. Now, our competitors will find that a united front against them via Grass-roots and Net-roots will be a very formidable force these next two election cycles....


To prove you're right... (Chris Guy - 2/16/2007 7:03:05 PM)
People from the Dean campaign sent Kerry a pair of flip-flops on Christmas of 2003.

The Gore campaign brought up Willie Horton before Dukakis won the nomination in 1988.

In the 1980 race, George H.W. Bush coined the term "Voodoo Economics" trying to topple Reagan.