Hillary Clinton's Campaign IEDs (Insinuations, Exaggerations and Distortions)

By Stephen Pizzo, News for Real. Posted March 17, 2008.

What are you going to do if Hillary Clinton succeeds bagging the Democratic Party nomination for President by playing dirty?

I've begun thinking about that more and more over the last couple of weeks. The Clintons have built their entire political lives on the premise that, if they can't win pretty, they'll settle for winning ugly.

Which is why things have gotten so ugly lately. Once it became clear she  could not beat Obama in a fair fight they switched tactics. IED's (Insinuations, Exaggerations and Distortions) are now the weapons of choice for the Clinton campaign. Hardly a day goes by now when one of these IEDs doesn't explode into the news.

"Is Obama a Muslim." Hillary was asked on 60-Minutes. "No. Not as far as I know," she replied.

BOOM!

"Obama is not ready to become Commander-in-Chief," Hillary warns then coyly adds, if voters on the fence pick her, she'd consider putting Obama a heartbeat away from becoming Commander-in-Chief.

BOOM!

"I have crossed the threshold and met the national security test to be Commander-in-Chief," Hillary says. "John McCain has also met that test. Obama gave a speech."

BOOM!

"The reason Obama has gotten where he is today is because he's black," pronounced Clinton supporter and finance committee big shot, Geraldine Ferraro.

BOOM!

BTW -- that was not the first time Ferraro set off a racial IED in the midst of a presidential primary. A Ferraro flashback:

"If Jesse Jackson were not black, he wouldn't be in the race," she said.

Really. The cite is an April 15, 1988 Washington Post story (byline: Howard Kurtz), available only on Nexis.

Placid of demeanor but pointed in his rhetoric, Jackson struck out repeatedly today against those who suggest his race has been an asset in the campaign. President Reagan suggested Tuesday that people don't ask Jackson tough questions because of his race. And former representative Geraldine A. Ferraro (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday that because of his "radical" views, "if Jesse Jackson were not black, he wouldn't be in the race."

Asked about this at a campaign stop in Buffalo, Jackson at first seemed ready to pounce fiercely on his critics. But then he stopped, took a breath, and said quietly, "Millions of Americans have a point of view different from" Ferraro's.

Discussing the same point in

Washington, Jackson said, "We campaigned across the South . . . without a single catcall or boo. It was not until we got North to New York that we began to hear this from Koch, President Reagan and then Mrs. Ferraro . . . . Some people are making hysteria while I'm making history." (Politico.com)

A few weeks back Bill Clinton detonated an almost identical Jesse Jackson IED. Coincidence? No way...

BOOM!

Can you imagine! I never thought I'd see a leading Democrat dip back to the tactics of the dark days when racist Democrats ruled the segregated South, playing the fears of whites against the hopes of blacks. Disgusting.

But insurgencies are, by necessity, ugly business. Inevitably there will be collateral damage. Innocents will be hurt. The means are ugly, but the ends will make amends -- we are assured. Once they win, the insurgents promise, they will get rid of the bad and the ugly and herald in the good.

Hillary holds up her role as First Lady as the reason she's "ready to lead from day one," and there may be some truth in that. Among the things she learned during those days was how run parallel political and insurgent actions. She learned this when husband Bill helped negotiate a settlement in Northern Ireland. While the Irish Republican Army conducted the ugly part of their insurgency the leader of its political arm, Sinn Fein, Gerry Adams,

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Stephen Pizzo is the author of numerous books, including Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans, which was nominated for a Pulitzer.

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