Tag: Fox News

Bill just keeps making things worse for Team Hillary. In explaining how she got it wrong on Bosnia, he himself is also inaccurate on almost every detail.

But here’s the capper: Bill keeps saying Hillary screwed up because it was 11 p.m. and she was tired. Excuse me? Someone who twice hung her entire campaign on her acumen, hypervigilance, and superior ability to respond after being awakened at 3 in the morning in the White House was brain dead at 11 at night on the campaign trail in Pennsylvania? Except it wasn’t 11 at night.

ABC’s Jake Tapper could find hardly anything correct in the former president’s explanation. First is Bill’s version, followed by what really happened, according to Tapper’s fact check.

Former President Bill Clinton offered this bit of revisionist history of his wife’s Bosnia story in Jasper, Ind., today, one riddled with a veritable sniper fire of errors.

“She took a terrible beating in the press for a few days,” he said, per ABC News’ Sarah Amos, “because she was exhausted at 11 o’clock at night (1) and she started talking about Bosnia and she misstated the circumstances under which she landed in Bosnia. (2)

“Did you all see all that? And oh, they acted like she was practically Mata Hari,” he said — referring to the Dutch exotic dancer accused by the French of spying for the Germans and executed by a firing squad during World War I — “like she was making up all this stuff.

“And then the president of Bosnia said, ‘Well, it was quite dangerous when she came, there were snipers in the hills all around,’ (3) And then Gen. Wes Clarke, who was there trying to make the peace among the Bosnians, said ‘Yeah, it was dangerous, let me remind you three of the Americans who were on my peace-keeping team were killed because they had to take a dangerous road ’cause they couldn’t go the regular way.’

[…]

Look for a big ol’ love fest when Gen. David Petraeus testifies before Congress tomorrow. Sen. McCain will get to go before Sen. Obama or Clinton in “questioning” the general, based on seniority.

Don’t expect Clinton or Obama to speak until late afternoon — one of them will soon be the party standard-bearer, but Senate rules break for no one. “In the ideological duel that will unfold tomorrow, [Sen. John] McCain will have a distinct logistical advantage, Republicans are quick to note,” Jonathan Weisman writes in The Washington Post.

“As the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, he will deliver the second statement and the second set of questions, and will have the right to interject at will. Allies said he is likely to toss out Clinton’s statement from the September hearing that it would take ‘a willing suspension of disbelief’ to accept Petraeus’s security assessment, and Clinton — lacking seniority — will only be able to watch.”

Expect McCain to intone preachy, yet gushing, monologues where he all but gets down on his knees to kiss the general’s butt.

This is why the Democrats need to have a candidate. McCain has a free and clear path. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is more and more becoming the Ralph Nader of 2008. If we lose again, she will join Ralph in the Ego for Ego’s Sake Hall of Fame.

Mark Penn, from Time Magazine

Yes, I know they’re saying that Hillary Clinton’s chief strategist, Mark Penn, left the campaign because of his mishandling of talks about a Colombian trade agreement.

…Penn had met with the Colombian Ambassador to the United States — in his capacity as the head of public relations firm Burson-Marsteller — in order to help the Colombian government push for congressional approval of a free trade agreement with the United States.

The problem? Senator Clinton — the candidate for whom Penn was also working — opposes that trade agreement.

Later on Friday, Penn described the meeting as “an error in judgment.” On Saturday, the Colombian government cancelled its contract with Penn’s firm.

Colombia, the story goes, was so insulted by Penn’s characterization of their meetings that they fired him. With Clinton’s, that makes two firings in as many days. Bad weekend.

But there’s more to Penn’s banishment from the Clinton campaign than that. For the benefit of those not paying attention, let’s just say Clinton hasn’t been doing so well lately, and she seems to blame a lot of her trouble on Penn. She’s probably right.

[…]

Run, Condi, Run: Here’s a candidate all Democrats can rally around — Condoleeza Rice appears to have unofficially signaled that would she would agree to be John McCain’s running mate.
To win in the fall, just as the Democratic nominee must suddenly pivot to the right, McCain will have to move left in order to appeal to Independents in the vote-rich center.
Rice has said she doesn’t “do” politics. We know from the record that she also doesn’t “do” national security and or international diplomacy, at least not well — but, as we learned during the six years of the GOP ascendancy, Republicans don’t put much stock in competence.

Rice’s supporters say she would bring two things to the GOP ticket: Name recognition, which would mean the McCain campaign would not have to waste time in the fall introducing the VP pick (as Bush I did with Dan Quayle); and, as an African-American woman, she would trump the barrier-breaking of the Democratic nominee, whomever she or he turns out to be.

In the kabuki dance of D.C. rituals, Rice unofficially tossed her hat in the ring late last month when she spoke at a weekly meeting of lobbyist Grover Norquist’s conservative anti-government group, Americans for Tax Reform. In a Q&A after her presentation, Rice answered “no,” but apparently meant “yes,” when asked if she would consider the VP nomination, according to Steve Clemons at the Washington Note:

Others still argue that one does not talk serious foreign policy matters with the Wednesday Group Meeting without wanting to also telegraph that one might be interested in political futures. In other words, though saying she is not interested in the vice presidential slot on a McCain ticket, Condoleezza Rice might be convinced at some point to give up her near California dreams if “necessity” required it…

And by all accounts I have heard, her performance was stunningly good, very well received by one of the major bastions of American conservative power players, and that she “won them over,” according to one source.

Clemons also said Condi told the group she planned to go back to California and write a book about her time in Washington and work in the Bush administration. Let’s hope it’s a novel.

Condi’s bio is a bit problematic however. GOP operative Roger Stone was quick towarn Florida Gov. Charlie Crist last year that if he wanted to be on the GOP ticket, he’d better get hitched, but quick. Stone insinuated that Republican voters would be suspicious that a bronzed, perfectly coiffed, unmarried candidate in his late 40s was gay. The same might also apply to an never-married candidate in her early 50s.

[…]

If you only count what I say between two specific dates, then when I change my mind later I can make it look as if I am on whatever side I want you to think I am.

That seems to be Hillary Clinton’s strategy for defending against an assertion by Barack Obama that just won’t go away. In discussing their records on Iraq, Obama has said he’ll put his judgement up against Clinton’s experience any day. Obama opposed the war from Day One while Clinton voted to authorize Bush to invade.

But Clinton now wants to only count what happened from 2005, when Obama took office in the U.S. Senate, and wipe out all his prior years of resistance in the Illinois state senate. ABC’s Jake Tapper deconstructed Clinton’s argument and found that even using the selective time frame, it was still lacking.

In Eugene, Ore., Saturday. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., attempted to change the measure by which anyone might assess who criticized the Iraq war first, her or Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., by saying those keeping records should start in January 2005, when Obama joined the Senate. (A measure that conveniently avoids her October 2002 vote to authorize use of force against Iraq at a time that Obama was speaking out against the war.) She claimed that using that measure she criticized the war in Iraq before Obama did.

But Clinton’s claim was false.

…It’s an odd way to measure opposition to the war — comparing who gave the first criticism of the war in Iraq starting in January 2005, ignoring Obama’s opposition to the war throughout 2003 and 2004.

But even if one were to employ this “Start Counting in January 2005” measurement, Clinton did not criticize the war in Iraq first.

[…]

Hillary Clinton’s parsing, revising, and exaggerating on the campaign trail have taken a toll on her image, according to a recent poll. A lot of people say they think she’s a phony.

A recent Gallup Poll found that 53 percent of Americans think Clinton isn’t “honest and trustworthy.” Just 29 percent said the same of her Democratic rival Barack Obama, and 27 percent said it of Republican John McCain.

Gallup analyst Jeffrey Jones called the credibility gap between Clinton and McCain “the largest between any two candidates for any dimension tested.”

It’s not just Gallup, and it’s not just the Bosnia story, which turned out to be demonstrably false, and which the candidate explained away by saying she was tired from campaigning and not thinking straight. And it wasn’t even 3 a.m. Can you imagine what Clinton would have said if Obama offered that excuse?

Another recent poll, this one conducted by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center before Clinton had to back down from her account of her Bosnia trip, found that 29 percent of white Democrats considered her a “phony,” almost twice as many as the 15 percent who described Obama that way.

Pew researchers concluded that Democrats’ views of Clinton “are more influenced by perceptions that she is phony than by any other trait or emotion tested.”

How could anyone call Mr. “100 Years in Iraq, Iran is Training Al-Quaida, Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran” a warmonger? Why, the noyve of these people!

The comments in question came Friday evening at an event in North Dakota where Barack Obama also spoke. Radio talk show host Ed Schultz addressed the crowd, during which he criticized McCain’s support of the Iraq war and called him a “warmonger.” Obama was not present for Schultz’s comments and spoke later at the event.

…”John McCain is not a warmonger and should not be described as such. He’s a supporter of a war that Senator Obama believes should have never been authorized and never been waged,” [Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki] said.

Obama’s campaign also notes Schultz is not an official supporter of the campaign and was asked to speak by the North Dakota Democratic Party, not the Obama campaign.

But… If he had been an official supporter… And if he were speaking on behalf of the Obama campaign… I wouldn’t have a problem with it.