This
latest incident, Drudge-gate, comes on the heels of Hillary's campaign and her surrogates promoting Obama's ties to "
former members of a radical domestic terrorist group."
Instead of strongly denouncing the incident, Hillary’s spokesperson uses his response to agree in part with Drudge:
On a conference call with reporters just now, Hillary spokesperson Howard Wolfson strongly denied any role in pushing the photo of Obama in a turban and Somali garb.
Drudge reported this morning that Clinton staffers had "circulated" the photo. He didn't say who circulated it, what level of Clinton staffer had circulated it, or to whom it had been circulated. Nonetheless, the media has been all over the story today.
Asked if the campaign had any role, Wolfson said, "
No, not to my knowledge...I've never seen that picture before. I'm not aware that anyone else here has. I'm not aware that anyone here has circulated this e-mail."
Wolfson did say, however, that
the campaign agreed with part of the message in the email -- that if the same photo had appeared of Hillary, it would have been a big story: "It is a common view among this campaign and our supporters that there is a difference in how the media covers our campaign and how it covers Senator Obama."
linkWhy is he validating Drudge? Consider this:
Hillary Clinton woos man who nearly ruined her husband:
Earlier this month, Ms Clinton's staff leaked campaign fundraising data to the website just as her rival for the nomination, Barack Obama, was to deliver a policy speech on Iraq - and a crucial 20 minutes before the official release of the information. The story on Ms Clinton's fundraising prowess dominated the news cycle.
Obama's campaign would not connect Hillary to the
latest attack story without validation.
There was a previous attempt to link Hillary's campaign to an attack and
Axelrod strongly denounced the attempts:
The article further reported that Obama strategist David Axelrod said he did not "believe ... for a second" the allegation that Clinton's camp was behind the story.
So what does Hillary’s campaign do after the weak denial from Wolfson? They continue the attacks based on Drudge’s claim. Today comes this claim from Stephanie Tubbs Jones:
Talking Points:
Obama Is A Native Somalian?At You Tube:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/180147.php">Tubbs Jones: Barack Obama and the "Clothing of His Country"Does the fact that he's running for President of the United States provide a tiny clue that he was born in the United States?
By Dana Milbank
Tuesday, February 26, 2008; Page A02
As Vice President Cheney knows, such predictions can be perilous. Still, there was no mistaking a certain flailing, a lashing-out, as two Clinton advisers sat down for a bacon-and-eggs session yesterday at the St. Regis Hotel.
<...>
First came Harold Ickes, who gave a presentation about Hillary Rodham Clinton's prospects that severed all ties with reality. "We're on the way to locking this nomination down," he said of a candidate who appears, if anything, headed in the other direction.
But before the breakfast crowd had a chance to digest that, they were served another, stranger course by Clinton campaign spokesman Phil Singer. Asked about an accusation on the Drudge Report that Clinton staffers had circulated a photo of Barack Obama wearing Somali tribal dress, Singer let 'er rip.
"I find it interesting that in a room of such esteemed journalists that Mr. Drudge has become your respected assignment editor," he lectured. "I find it to be a reflection of one of the problems that's gone on with the overall coverage of this campaign." He went on to chide the journalists for their "woefully inadequate" coverage of Obama, "a point that has been certainly backed up by the 'Saturday Night Live' skit that opened the show this past Saturday evening, which I would refer you all to."
The brief moment explained everything about the bitter relations between Clinton's campaign and the media: Singer taunting the likes of Broder, who began covering presidential politics two decades before Singer was born, with a comedy sketch that showed debate moderators fawning over Obama.
"That's your assignment editor?" responded Post columnist Ruth Marcus.
"That's my assignment editor," Singer affirmed.
That Clinton's spokesman is taking his cues from late-night comedy is as good an indication as any of where things stand in the onetime front-runner's campaign. To keep the press from declaring the race over before the voters of Ohio and Texas have their say next week, Clinton aides have resorted to a mixture of surreal happy talk and angry accusation.
Yesterday, Ickes played the good cop. "We think we are on the verge of our next up cycle," he reported, even suggesting the apparent impossibility that Clinton "may be running even" with Obama when all the contests are over. "This race is very close," he judged. "This is tight as a tick."
moreA sign of things to come:
by John Aravosis (DC) · 2/25/2008
From the NYT:
After struggling for months to dent Senator Barack Obama’s candidacy, the campaign of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is now unleashing what one Clinton aide called a “kitchen sink” fusillade against Mr. Obama, pursuing five lines of attack since Saturday in hopes of stopping his political momentum....
After denouncing Mr. Obama over the weekend for an anti-Clinton flier about the Nafta trade treaty, and then sarcastically portraying his message of hope Sunday as naïve, Mrs. Clinton delivered a blistering speech on Monday that compared Mr. Obama’s lack of foreign policy experience to that of the candidate George W. Bush.
Does she really want to go there? I mean, she was the one who supported giving Bush the authority to go into Iraq - not Obama. Actually, I think she wants a fight on anything she can get at this point. It was illustrative during the last debate that when Hillary was raising her voice about plagiarism, Obama responded with a treatise on health care. He didn't take the bait, and his polls have kept rising. Clinton needs him to take the bait, needs him to get rattled, to get angry, to do something stupid, or else his momentum continues and she loses the entire nomination next Tuesday. And going positive, discussing ideas, isn't getting her anywhere. So, it's now time for the kitchen sink. The thing is, all Obama has to do is duck and the nomination is his. And Hillary will spend the next week destroying 7 years of successful hard work getting people to like her again. She's only 60 years old, she has another shot at this, is this the way she wants to go out?
Edited for clarity
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