Robert Parry: Are the Clintons Playing Joe McCarthy?

[marmar]

from Consortium News:




Are the Clintons Playing Joe McCarthy?

By Robert Parry
April 18, 2008


In the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954, with Sen. Joe McCarthy near the peak of his guilt-by-association bullying, he famously attacked the patriotism of a young Boston lawyer who worked for Joseph Welch, the Army’s chief legal representative.

“Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?” Welch responded. “Have you left no sense of decency?”

Now, as Hillary Clinton’s campaign continues to sink into a mud pile of guilt-by-association smears against Barack Obama, Welch’s famous question could be posed to the Clintons and their supporters: How far are they prepared to go and have they “left no sense of decency?”

In the April 16 debate in Philadelphia, Sen. Clinton lit up when her husband’s former adviser, George Stephanopoulos, finally asked one of her campaign’s long-plotted attack lines – raising a tenuous association between Obama and an aging Vietnam-era radical William Ayers.

Stephanopoulos, acting as an ABC News debate moderator, and Clinton also injected a false suggestion that Ayers had either hailed the 9/11 attacks or had used the occasion as a grotesque opportunity to call for more bombings.

(In reality, an earlier interview about his memoir was coincidently published by the New York Times in its Sept. 11, 2001, edition, which went to press on Sept. 10, before the attacks. But Stephanopoulos and Clinton left the impression with the public that Ayers's comments represented a ghoulish reaction to the 9/11 attacks.)

In another guilt-by-association moment, Clinton linked Obama, via his former church pastor Jeremiah Wright, to Black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan and a Hamas representative who had been allowed to publish an essay in the church’s newsletter. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/041708a.html

[futureliveshere]

1. Aah, so Ayers didnt react to 9/11. Looks like the Clintons messed up AGAIN!!! Good catch..K&R

[marmar]

6. Robert Parry is excellent at cutting through the bull and calling it like it is.

n/t

[krkaufman]

8. Except it was likely successful for her, since far more people will have heard the smear ...

... than any eventual correction. (and studies have shown that the smears leave residual damage even when refuted)

[FrenchieCat]

2. Yes, they are playing McCarthy, and acting like it is for the good of the

party/nominee. So are supporters here at this site.

and yeah....the Ayer piece was published before 9/11.....

[marmar]

4. Sad but true....

n/t

[blm]

9. Clintons have decided they won't just PROTECT the Bushes, they will BE the Bushes

and don't care about the Dem party and its integrity, just as Bushes used the GOp for their own selfish agenda.

Clintons are mad that more of us won't LET THEM usurp our Dem party any longer in the way Bushes did to the traditional GOP.

[HereSince1628]

3. At this point I suspect this sort of crap just cements people's choices

If a person is is thinking of voting one way it's gonna be seen from that perspective.

[H2O Man]

5. Very good.

Nominated.

[MagickMuffin]

7. Great article, Robert Parry NEVER fails to address the issues

and exposing the Clinton's betrayal of the Democratic Party is spot on. I did like Obama's come back about the pardons Hillary's husband granted to 2 Weather Underground members. She certainly didn't want to discuss the WU anymore at that point, COWARD.
Of course since she thinks this will be such a big issue in the fall, if she is the nominee I guess McCaineyBush will bring it up, at least by her logic.

:kick: & RRRRRRRR

[bvar22]

10. K&R for TRUTH!

After listening to the Clinton spin, I WAS under the impression that Ayers had made his comments AFTER the WTC collapse. They repeatedly state that his comments were ON 9-11......BULLSHIT!

The whole context changes when the TRUTH OUTS. Ayers comments were pre 9-11, and referred a long ago past.

I am sooooo tired of the Clintons, and can't wait till she withdraws.
I will be donating to Hillary's primary opponent for her Senate seat in 2012.


"There are forces within the Democratic Party who want us to sound like kinder, gentler Republicans. I want us to compete for that great mass of voters that want a party that will stand up for working Americans, family farmers, and people who haven't felt the benefits of the economic upturn."---Paul Wellstone