hillarynews
Joined: 24 Jan 2007
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 Posted: Tue Mar 11, 2008 3:00 am Post subject: Who would the GOP rather face? |
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 Who would the GOP rather face?
By Mike Madden, SalonEvery time Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama met for a debate this year, the Republican National Committee got busy. RNC operatives blasted e-mail after e-mail to reporters, highlighting little details here and there about what the leading Democrats said and how (in Republican dreams) it would come back to bite them in the fall.The last few showdowns, though, saw the messages about Clinton slowly drop off, while the Obama e-mails came faster and faster. During their last debate in Cleveland, the RNC sent out eight memos on Obama, and only two on Clinton -- and one of those mentioned Obama, too.
Category: Top Story
By Mike Madden, SalonEvery time Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama met for a debate this year, the Republican National Committee got busy. RNC operatives blasted e-mail after e-mail to reporters, highlighting little details here and there about what the leading Democrats said and how (in Republican dreams) it would come back to bite them in the fall.The last few showdowns, though, saw the messages about Clinton slowly drop off, while the Obama e-mails came faster and faster. During their last debate in Cleveland, the RNC sent out eight memos on Obama, and only two on Clinton -- and one of those mentioned Obama, too.So it's with surprise and befuddlement -- and some relish -- that Republicans, especially John McCain's strategists, are now looking at the sudden revival of a race in the other party that they thought was more or less over. Plans that were already being drawn up to try to beat Obama are on hold. If you think you're confused watching Obama and Clinton battle, you're not alone. "I don't know who the hell the nominee's going to be," said Mark Salter, a senior advisor to McCain's campaign. But the McCain team does find itself facing two prospects that may benefit their candidate -- a costly, protracted fight for the nomination on the other side of the aisle, and the possibility that the last Democrat standing may be a woman whose very name spurs GOP voters and donors into action.For weeks, McCain has been running against Obama. He started dropping little rhetorical bombs on him when they both swept the "Potomac primaries" in mid-February, mocking Obama's favorite lines in his own victory speech. Then he picked a fight over Iraq, seizing on Obama's statement in a debate that he would order troops back into the country after the U.S. withdraws if al-Qaida started setting up bases. Obama, meanwhile, pushed back at McCain over campaign finance. The calendar may have read February, but it felt like October.But in a year when the pundits have gotten it wrong almost every week, why should the Republicans be any different? By Tuesday night, when McCain clinched his nomination, the speech Salter wrote for him suddenly abandoned most of the specific Obama references in favor of generic "my opponent" language that basically ran through the usual Republican sound bites against any Democrat -- "my opponent" will pull out of NAFTA, "my opponent" likes taxes, "my opponent" wants big government healthcare mandates. The fall campaign, already in progress, was put back on hold.All winter, Republicans have glanced across the aisle and wondered what, exactly, was going on in the Democratic race. Sometimes the lessons they've drawn have been a bit off. Mitt Romney was so impressed by Obama's win in Iowa that he started calling himself a change candidate, as if he'd forgotten that the change Obama was pushing started with putting a Democrat in the White House. The vast sums of money both Democrats are raising inspires some longing among McCain staffers, who sound amazed at reports that Obama has 700 paid staffers working for him.
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Source: The Hillary Project
Description: reporting the news about Hillary that the media refuses to |
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