The Clinton Campaign Embraces the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy to Launch Attacks on Obama

BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG

Mark Karlin

Editor and Publisher

March 27, 2008

It's hard to feel so betrayed.

After ferociously defending the Clintons in the '90s against the vast right-wing conspiracy, we have seen them embrace the dangerous anti-democracy conspirators in order to attack Barack Obama. Time and time again since 2000, Senator Hillary Clinton has sought out and used the very people whom we defended her against -- and the evidence is damning.

One of the first overtures Senator Clinton made was to Rupert Murdoch, owner and creator of FOX News. Murdoch threw a fundraiser for her early on in her Senate foray and Clinton pursued a rapprochement with him with vigor.

In the 2008 campaign, the Clinton embrace of the right-wing conspiracy who we fought a pitched battle with in the '90s has been relentless -- and all with one goal in mind, to find common cause with them to attack Barack Obama. This is beyond shameful; it is a Shakespearean betrayal, something out of Othello or Macbeth.

BuzzFlash was the first Internet site, as far as we know, to point out the significance of where Senator Clinton tried to tamp down her Bosnia "sniper fire attack" lie (spoken on at least four occasions) with a one-week belated personal blast at Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Obama. What is most revealing is not the diversionary strategy, but that she did this at an editorial meeting at the Pittsburgh Star-Review. The Star-Review is owned by the infamous Richard Mellon Scaife, who was the largest financial backer of the infamous "Arkansas Project" that was the privately funded precursor to the Ken Starr impeachment efforts against Bill Clinton.

Subsequent photographs appear to show that Richard Mellon Scaife was seated next to Senator Clinton during the Tuesday editorial board session in which Clinton attempted to divert attention from her Bosnia whopper. It wasn't the first Clinton family rapprochement with Scaife. Bill Clinton had lunch with him a few months back, clearly as a way of attempting to woo him for Hillary's race in Pennsylvania and raise money for his library foundation (another "unvetted" list of contributors that is a potential minefield of conflicts of interest).

A lot of us shed a lot of sweat taking on Scaife as he poured money into the "Arkansas Project" in the early '90s, most notably coming up with "Troopergate" and Paula Jones. The Scaife-backed initiative was led by a long-time right-wing rag known as the American Spectator. Ted Olson was a key figure on the board who provided "oversight" (eventually there was a falling out over alleged financial improprieties on the part of the Spectator staff), while David Brock, before his political conversion, wrote hit jobs on the Clintons for the Spectator. It cannot be diminished as to the important impact that Scaife's financing and the American Spectator had on keeping trumped up allegations against the Clintons simmering until Jesse Helms was able to get Starr placed into the Independent Counsel's position.

You'd think that the Clintons would honor those who defended them by continuing to reject the tactics that nearly brought them down, and against which we all railed. But the noted and deeply respected journalist James Fallows penned a disgusted article [0] the other day condemning the Hillary Clinton campaign for distributing an American Spectator hit job on Obama to the media to try and dirty up the Senator from Illinois. That's right, the Hillary Clinton for President Campaign, in two days, used the financier and trash paper of the right-wing conspiracy that pursued them in the '90s against Hillary's Democratic primary opponent -- and used them not against the right wing or McCain, but against a fellow Democrat.

Fallows denounces the malodorous stench of hypocrisy. The Clintons seemingly want us to defend them against the vast right-wing conspiracy, while they use their former foes to dirty up Barack Obama: "But if, as I assume is true based on Marc Ambinder's report, the Hillary Clinton campaign is circulating a hit job from the American Spectator, this is simply disgusting. (Marc has just confirmed to me that indeed the article came in an on-the-record email from Phil Singer, the Clinton campaign spokesman.)"

This is what Fallows concluded. "That the Clinton family would dignify the American Spectator, of all publications, is astonishing to anyone who was alive in the 1990s." That Hillary Clinton would team up with Richard Mellon Scaife and his vanity newspaper in Pittsburgh to besmirch Obama in order to put a brake on the growing damage generated by the exposure of her Bosnia "fairy tale" is unforgivable.

But there is more insidious use of the "right-wing conspiracy" to enhance Hillary Clinton's candidacy. Most BuzzFlash readers are aware that Clinton has received thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of Republican votes, in Texas and Ohio as a result of a Rush Limbaugh "chaos" strategy to have her nominated because she would be easier for the Republicans to beat -- and she would turn out GOP voters in the November election to cast ballots "down ticket" for Republicans running for Congress, the Senate, State, City and County positions. Well, the day of the primary voting in Texas, who should appear on the Rush Limbaugh Show (albeit with a guest host) but Bill Clinton.

And let us not forget about how BuzzFlash documented the liaison relationship [0] that the Hillary Clinton campaign had developed with the infamous Drudge Report (you know Matt, who leaked, among other Ken Starr tidbits, the semen-stained blue dress story during the impeachment period). And it was to Drudge that someone from the Clinton Campaign's staff or consultants leaked the photo image of Barack Obama in traditional African garb.

It's hard for many of the current supporters of the Hillary Clinton campaign who bonded strongly, as we did, in the '90s to realize how they have sold us out by using the right-wing conspiracy megaphone to smear fellow Democrats. Many Clinton advocates still are of the mindset that the Clintons are being relentlessly pursued by the Scaifes of the world.

Yes, the die-hard, rabid Hillary haters are out there in the media, but instead of raising the campaign to a level where we could define a new "frame" for battling with them, the Clinton campaign has joined forces with many of those key people that they ask us to defend them from.

That is a betrayal of the basest kind.

We, for one, will not defend those who mobilize the vast right-wing conspiracy when it suits their personal goals.

We are progressives. We are Democrats. We believe in decency and integrity.

You won't find us bailing ourselves out by teaming up against "the black man" with Richard Mellon Scaife, or the American Spectator, or Rush Limbaugh.

But the Clinton campaign will, and then ask us to defend them from the very same people.