The Clintons and the 'War on Obama' [View All]

[peoli]

By Robert Parry
May 4, 2008

"Last December, when I first learned via Clinton insiders that their “oppo” package would include Barack Obama’s associations with fiery black preacher Jeremiah Wright and Vietnam War-era radical William Ayers, I shrugged at what sounded to me like sub-standard fare from the dark side of American politics.

So what if someone’s minister said some stupid things or that an aging one-time student radical had lent some support to a politician’s campaign, I thought.

Besides those two themes, Clinton insiders were plotting how to exploit Obama’s past political ties to indicted real-estate developer Tony Rezko, and they even were hashing over how they might slip in suggestions that Obama’s dead mother had been a leftist. (When I heard the “oppo” about the dead mother, I really couldn’t believe my ears.)

Even then – in December before the first votes had been cast – the Clintons were so caught up in their ambition to return to the White House that they were veering toward the worst aspects of politics, what is generally associated with the American Right and the most ruthless Republican operatives – guilt-by-association, red-baiting, McCarthyism and racial messaging.

The rationale that I heard from the Clinton operatives was that these Obama vulnerabilities would be exploited by the Republicans in the general election, so it was necessary to destroy Obama when there was still time for another Democrat (i.e. Hillary Clinton) to be nominated."

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/050308.html