have voted for âAll of Them,â inasmuch as none of the Democrats could face questions from Fox News's Brit Hume, the winner turned out to be Obama. Hillary claimed to be a victim of the Republicans, while Obama claimed to be a victim of Republicans, Hillary, and racists.
To make her case that she was the best candidate, Hillary said she was the biggest victim of Republicans. She got a round of applause during the South Carolina Democratic Debate, in January 2008, by saying, âIf it is indeed the classic Republican campaign, I've been there. I've done that. They've been after me for sixteen years, and much to their dismay I am still here.â Brave Hillary!
Obama countered Hillary's claim that he was too scrawny to withstand the Republican Attack Machine by saying Hillary had been weakened by the Republican Attack Machine. As Obama supporter Senator Sheldon Whitehouse put it, Obama âhas not been worked over for years by the Republican smear machineâ¦. Hillary carries a legacy of the Republican attack machine that took her and President Clinton on for a decade, really, with billions of dollars behind themâwell, hundreds of millions anywayâand so it's a different thing.â 20 This makes me very angry: If the fantasy Republican Attack Machine has billions, or at least hundreds of millions of dollars, where's my check?
Obama claimed to be a victim of Republicans, too. Blubbering on
60 Minutes
about the coming Republican attacks, he said, âThe Republicansare going to come after me. There's no doubt that there will be attempts on the part of the Republican Party to demonize me in the general election.â 21
Both Hillary and Obama accused each other of adopting the smear techniques of the Republicans. Hillary said Obama was using tactics âright out of Karl Rove's playbookâ 22 âan incongruous complaint from a candidate who boasted of her ability to withstand Republican attacks. Obama's team had the same complaint with Hillaryâthat she was as bad as the Republicans. When superdelegate and Indiana native Joe Andrew switched his allegiance from Hillary to Obama days before the Indiana primary, Evan Bayh, senator from Indiana and Clinton delegate, commented, âI don't think he's lived in our state for eight or nine years. I don't think he can even vote in Indiana.â
This brutal attack was too much for Andrew, who went on MSNBC's
Countdown with Keith Olbermann
to complain, âWhat you're hearing now is the exact kind of language that came out from Republicans when I was defending Bill Clinton during the impeachment of the president.â 23
This was surprising to me, because if anyone was part of any Republican Attack Machine during Clinton's impeachment, I think I was, and yet I had never heard of Joe Andrew. Indeed, Keith Olbermann pompously introduced Andrew as âthe most influential politician you probably had never heard ofâwhich is a big compliment coming from a TV show host most Americans have never heard of. Maybe when Andrew said Hillary's people were using âthe exact kind of language that came out from Republicans,â he meant English.
A search of Joe Andrew on Nexis turns up innumerable mentions of Andrew, who was the chair of the Democratic Party in 1999, reciting bland Democratic talking points, but there wasn't a lot of criticism from the Republican Attack Machine, perhaps because it can only attack objects large enough to be seen by the naked eye. Still, if Andrew says he was a victim of Republican attacks, then he must have been. So I tried searching Andrew's name near words like âlieâ or âliarâ or âlyingâ and finally got a hit: It was Andrew accusing his Republican counterpart of âlying on national televisionâ for implying that Hillary knew what Bill was doing with MonicaLewinsky. To this, Andrew responded, âLook, if you're going to lie on national television, at least you ought
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