Speaking for me only
The HuffPo:
The Clinton campaign emailed around harsh comments from two Republican pundits:
Grover Norquist: ‘That sentence will lose him the election… He just announced to rural America: I don’t like you.’ “Grover Norquist, the anti-tax activist who leads an influential weekly meeting of conservatives, went as far as to argue that Obama’s line would cost Democrats the White House. ‘That sentence will lose him the election,’ Norquist told ABC News. ‘He just announced to rural America: ‘I don’t like you.'” [abcnews.com, 4/11/08]
Republican strategist Ed Rollins: Q: “On a scale of 1 to 10 how damaging is this?” Rollins: ‘Ten.’ [CNN, Lou Dobbs, 4/11/08]
Hillary Clinton, right wing concern troll. When she was getting Norquist’s opinion, did she ask him if he had made any progress on the investigation into Vince Foster’s death or Whitewater? Did they ask Rollins about paying to suppress the vote in the 90’s?
vwcat
Believe me, the Clintons are working with the republicans and anyone who doubts this is living in a fantasy world.
cleek
Ed Rollins has a big love/hate hard-on for Clinton’s candidacy.
vwcat
Alot on the right have a hard on for Clintons candidacy. They want to run against her with 20 years of oppo research and soooooooo much to use against her.
Plus, they know their interests will be taken care of if Hillary makes it. Afterall, it’s said her husband was the best president the republicans ever had.
AkaDad
Hillary was just giving Obama a friendly heads-up, letting him know what the Republicans are saying. Basically watching his back. She’s loyal like that.
Dennis - SGMM
It’s not as if it would be the first time. Look at the legislation that Bill Clinton signed into law. For even more fun, look at his over 300 signing statements or Google Bill Clinton + executive privilege. As far as I can see, the only reason that the Clintons masquerade as Democrats is because the Republican party has moved too far to the right to accept them.
Incertus
I’ll give her this much–she’s making Obama look a lot more progessive than he really is, just by reinforcing the right-wing talking points. Does anyone in the working class give two shits what Grover Fucking Norquist has to say? Do most of them even know who he is?
TR
Look, she had to rely on Norquist and Collins, because her other regular media contacts at the American Spectator, Drudge Report, Fox News and Scaife’s newspapers were all busy! Get off her back!
cleek
quick, who said this:
i’m sure it wasn’t James Carville, one of Hillary’s top advisors. she certainly wouldn’t associate with such an elitist.
h/t TBogg
cleek
let me add…
not only did this person (who certainly couldn’t be associated with the Clinton campaign) insult central PA, he also insulted Alabama.
again, i’m sure Hillary will issue a half-dozen press releases defending the rural PA citizenry against this awful slander, and another half-dozen defending Alabama. she is, after all, only trying to defend the little guy.
A.Political
I think I’m going insane here…I have CNN on in the background and heard Susan Malveaux intro’ing Barracks reply to Hillary and McCains attack re the bitter/gun/religion flap (about 10mins ago), so they play the clip that John has a few posts below, Obama finishes speaking about McCain and the sub-prime ignorance and then they cut back to Malveaux who then says it’s interesting how Obama only rebutted McCain and did not mention Clinton at all….WTF!?!?! If they had let the clip play he tears in to her seconds later about the credit-card sponsored bill and bankruptcy and then says he is is in-touch to a standing ovation. I mean seriously WTF?!?! Did Malveaux/CNN willfully twist this or does she have her head so far up her a$$ that she never watched the clip herself. Help me, this is absolutely disgusting.
jrg
Nobody likes to be called “bitter”, even if it’s true, so I’d say this is a gaffe on Obama’s part. Still, Obama is correct – Social cons can only play the victim card so many times before it becomes obvious that they truly believe that the world has wronged them.
But Hillary… Give me a break. She sounds exactly like the Republicans.
Obama is playing the strategy outlined by Thomas Frank. I always wondered if the strategies Frank outlined would work on a national scale. It looks like we might find out.
My suspicion is that this strategy won’t work, because there appears to be no bottom in the pit of socially conservative stupidity, but it’s hard for me to judge dispassionately, because I have such contempt for those people.
Dennis - SGMM
My thought is that this may be Obama’s undoing. Not because there aren’t many Americans who are bitter because they feel that they’ve been screwed, they have been screwed. We’ve been screwed by both parties. You just get to choose how you want to be screwed and then you raise your ass and say “Yes, dear.” To impute, in even the mildest of ways in the us versus them world of American politics, that neither party has served us as well as it might or that both parties have comprehensively let us down, is anathema. We’re the good guys, who failed to provide, say universal health care or even tentative moves toward energy independence when we had a popular Democratic president and a Democratic congress. How dare Obama imply that we let ourselves down?
Xenos
My suspicion is that members of the social con communities who are under the age of, say, 35, are a distinct generation that may be amenable to rethinking their positions. They may also be able to engage older social cons and get some to rethink their loyalty to the GOP.
/pollyanna
MBL
Somebody do me a favor. Treat me like I’m a slow three-year-old and explain, in small words, just what the fuck the problem is with what Obama said. Apparently my Hoosier ass is too stupid to figure it out on my own.
John Cole
If you don’t know, you are one of them elitists.
slippy hussein toad
I’m still trying to figure out how Grover Norquist knows what regular people think. As far as I know, he’s never worked a day in his useless, jackoff life.
Eural Joiner
This is crazy!
Leading Republican talking-heads/strategists are actually predicting that the Democrats are going to lose? Crazy, I tell you!!
Just imagine…if Karl Rove were to arrive at the same conclusion and announce it in public. It would be a trifecta of right-wing consensus never seen before. (Except for all the other times they said the same thing…right before November, 2006 I believe?)
Rick Taylor
Since I don’t agree with the argument, I may not be the best person to try explaining it, but I’ll give it a shot. First you need to ignore everything else Obama said. Take only the following few lines:
So he’s being patronizing because he says people cling to religion because they’ve been treated badly, not because they have good cause to be religious. He’s implicitly being elitist because he’s saying, look at these foolish people clinging on to guns or religion or worries about immigration, you can’t blame them for that, it’s just because they’ve been treated badly they don’t know any better. Hillary’s argument is based off of this.
Helena Montana
La Clinton certainly has more in common with Norquist & Rollins than she does with Howard Dean.
MBL
So first he was a Muslim, then he spent all of his time absorbing every word his crrrrrrrrrrrrrrrazy Christian pastor said, and now he’s an atheist?
Gotcha.
Rick Taylor
See? You do understand!
Kevin
I suspect it’s the latter. Most TV people really are that lazy.