Endorsement
Apr 20th, 2008 at 3:30 pm by Susie
I’d say this is newsworthy, wouldn’t you?
PHILADELPHIA — Could it be the “vast right wing conspiracy” is having second thoughts? Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton was endorsed Sunday by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, whose owner and publisher, billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, personally funded many of the investigations that led to President Clinton’s impeachment in 1998.
It was one of a handful of endorsements the New York senator has received from Pennsylvania newspapers before the state’s primary Tuesday. Most of the state’s major papers have endorsed Barack Obama.
In its endorsement, Tribune-Review editors said Obama is too inexperienced to be president and that his recent comments about bitter voters living in small towns showed a lack of respect for middle-class values.
“In sharp contrast, Clinton is far more experienced in government — as an engaged first lady to a governor and a president, as a second-term senator in her own right,” the paper said. “She has a real voting record on key issues. Agree with her or not, you at least know where she stands instead of being forced to wonder.”
Clinton met with the Tribune-Review’s editorial board, including Scaife, last month. Afterward, Scaife wrote an editorial titled “Hillary, Reassessed,” declaring how impressed he had been by the former first lady.
“Her meeting and her remarks during it changed my mind about her,” Scaife wrote.
In the 1990s, Scaife helped support conservative groups and publications investigating Bill Clinton’s financial dealings and sex life.
Scaife spent $2.3 million to fund a series of articles by The American Spectator magazine that dug into Bill Clinton’s behavior as governor of Arkansas.
Rush Limnbaugh is for Sen. Clinton too - he urges his listeners to vote for her all the time.
Richard Mellon Scaife now thinks she’d be a great president. Good enough for me - if that fine American endorses her she’s got my vote.
My God, what happened to the left?
If Clinton were half what you say she was she would use the opportunity to tell Scaife to go **** himself. This is a man who accused her of murder, her and her husband of running a drug ring, and her husband of rape. And she’s gonna smile and accept his endorsement? That’s pitiful.
And no different than McCain sucking up to Bush after the “he’s got a darkie for a kid” smears.
Yes, it’s definitely newsworthy,
The question is: what does it really mean?
Murdoch was playing footsie with HRC about a year ago, but has recently changed his mind.
Limbaugh’s all for her lately.
And now this.
It can’t be well intended.
Perhaps they aim to keep the bloody, destructive Demo primary going as long as possible.
Bob & Izquierdo make good points. It reinforces the theory that the repukes would rather face Mrs. Clinton in November. Are we going to regret not nominating Edwards / Clark?
This is hardly the kind of endorsement that Mrs. Clinton can get excited about. The legitimate papers of the state are almost unanimous in their support for Obama. So what motivates Scaif to do this? Could it be, just maybe, that the right would adore the opportunity to motivate its “base” to elect McCain by having Hillary to kick around? Thankfully, this is all fantasy as the race is essentially over.
Ann Coulter
Rush Limbaugh
Richard Mellon Scaife
Please, please tell me that no Democrat is actually saying ANY of these 3 people supporting her in the nomination process are a good thing!
Jesus.
Don’t any of you get it? She’s just neutralized one of the biggest forces arrayed against her in the 90s. Which takes some air out of the argument that electing her means a return to all of the scandals of the 90s and the VRWC.
If it were anyone else, you might be admiring her huevos for going into the lion’s den and impressing this guy instead of running away. Because scumbag though he is, Scaife is the publisher of a paper that Pittsburghers read daily, and regardless of what he did to her and her husband, Clinton is running for President and she can use all of the endorsements she can get.
Not that I am surprised but it’s the ones who support the ‘unity’ candidate doing the savaging here…never did think that there was anything to the unity thing anyway.
The only people who care what Rush/Sean/Ann have to say about Democratic candidates is Republicans and Democrats who think like Republicans.
Scaife owns a newspaper. He endorsed her…imagine that.
For those who somehow think that Obama represents the left, look at Susie’s latest diary The Ridiculousness of Obama 2008 not that any one actually needed Sirota to tell us that Obama isn’t left, isn’t liberal, doesn’t promote any liberal policies and offers nothing to progressives/liberals worth fighting for except that he is not a Clinton.
Of course HuffPo and DailyKos were never liberal or progressive either. Note that the true progressives/liberals like FireDogLake and Digby won’t endorse Obama…why do you think that is?
Some of you are so unhinged with CDS that you confuse Obama as being left/progressive - hint - he’s not.
yep the guy with the most liberal voting record in 2007 in the senate is not really a liberal.
but, the woman from the administration that signed nafta, ended welfare, signed doma, implemented don’t ask don’t tell, etc. IS the liberal!
now you sound like all the republicans trying to deal with the disaster that is gwb, “he’s not really a conservative” they whine.
right.
good luck with this latest rationalization.
“yep the guy with the most liberal voting record in 2007 in the senate is not really a liberal.”
Has this ranking ever been verified by an actual LIBERAL org?
yep the guy with the most liberal voting record in 2007 in the senate is not really a liberal.
but, the woman from the administration that signed nafta, ended welfare, signed doma, implemented don’t ask don’t tell, etc. IS the liberal!
Hillary is not her husband, first off. Let’s just please kill that one now; it’s one of the most misogynist tropes out there, treating a woman as a mere appendage of her husband (and before you start the argument that she’s running on Bill’s record: she’s not. She’s running on what *she* did during Bill’s administration).
Secondly, and more importantly, when one points out that Obama is not really a progressive, it is not the same thing as arguing that Clinton is the *real* progressive. She’s not, and nobody claims she is. But *neither is Obama a progressive.* They’re *both centrists.* On paper, they’re Tweedledee and Tweedledum, for crap’s sake — yes, even on the war since he’s been in the Senate.
steveeboy @ 8
thanks once again for your original and insightful analysis free of talking points.
Next time, I’ll just use your handle, post your comments for you and save you the energy and bandwidth
zuzu’s got it right, and as a former dem-in-pitt, i expect that the tr’s endorsement will carry votes, both in pitt, and around pitt.
just as a matter of style, depricating both hrc for meeting with scaife, and for scaife reversing his position of (long and well funded) record afterwards is lame.
if your guy meets with the enemy, and converts him to non-enemy, you’re going to do what exactly?
i really enjoy black adder, (the most gripping sitcom since 1380) the characters of edmund and baldrick, and some of the comments above could be taken straight from the show.
Limbaugh and Coulter are playing head games with progressives, and progressives are falling for it. The best liberal response would be to respond “who cares” and evaulate Clinton on her merits. Nothing deflates gasbags worse than being insignificant.
“Limbaugh and Coulter are playing head games with progressives, and progressives are falling for it.”
… but there are real breathing human beings who call themselves Democrats who would claim that the motives of a prime mover and financier of the Arkansas Project and other ring-wing Clinton attack machines, should be trusted? Incredible, just incredible.
Here’s a partial list of what the Arkansas Project paid people to push as actually facts and bankrolled multiple legal actions to try to bring these things into the main stream:
- Bill Clinton committed multiple rapes
- Hillary arranged the murder of Vince Foster to cover up her many nefarious illegal activities related to Whitewater
- Both Clintons ran a drug smuggling operation (there were murders involved in this too)
The Arkansas Project also bankrolled Paula Jones and Scaife money helped in the creation of a marvelous little movie called “The Clinton Chronicles.” Seriously - Google this gem of a movie if you don’t know about it. That is what Scaife is all about.
She won him over. There are video clips up of her ninety-minute interview with the editorial board. She answers questions without recourse to notes. Scaife, sitting at her right, keeps nodding in agreement. I’d bet he was thinking, “Where has this woman been all my life?”
Just what I want in a candidate: someone who makes snotty remarks about moveon voters and gets scaife’s endorsement.
I can actually smell the love.
… but there are real breathing human beings who call themselves Democrats who would claim that the motives of a prime mover and financier of the Arkansas Project and other ring-wing Clinton attack machines, should be trusted? Incredible, just incredible.
So, by that logic, Obama’s willingness to meet with Iran without preconditions means that his motives are not to be trusted. And maybe it’s because he’s really a secret Muslim after all!
Get a grip.
It’s an important point to make that while certain Reich-Wing mouthpieces are saying Sen. Obama is the most liberal member in the Senate (which is a bad thing according to them), Sen. Clinton is their preferred choice over Obama (which is a good thing?). If Hillary likes the Rethuglican endorsements so much, she can lobby for a VP spot (which she’d also love to have) with John McCain. I hope Barack blows her out of the water on Tues, but there appears to be vote integrity issues in PA as well [ Tuesday’s Election Will be ‘Unrecountable, Unverifiable, and Unauditable’… http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5916 ] .
Curiouser and curiouser….
Right-wingers “endorse” Clinton for 2 reasons:
1) They want her to win the nomination because they believe McCain has a better chance against her than he does against Obama.
2) This begins their criticism of Obama, the likely candidate. They cannot possible endorse him now and then endorse McCain in the general - so when having to pick someone in the primary, they have to pick Clinton.
This has nothing to do with any of these people liking Clinton in anyway - it’s just a calculated move of not expressing a single positive thing about McCain’s most likely opponent.
Wow. The really odd thing about this is that I guess it WASN’T newsworthy. I’ve not seen this posted anywhere else. Granted, RMS and HRC did their interview a while back, so perhaps the surprise factor’s diminished somewhat. But this is Mr. VRWC we’re talking here…there should have been SOMEthing…
Zuzu @ 6: “Don’t any of you get it? She’s just neutralized one of the biggest forces arrayed against her in the 90s. Which takes some air out of the argument that electing her means a return to all of the scandals of the 90s and the VRWC.”
Ah, sorry, but no. If you or anyone here believes for a minute that any of the right-wing olive branches being proffered to Sen. Clinton are genuine you really need to stop commenting on politics. Right, she “neutralized” Scaife. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Not a chance in hell he’d turn on here after the election, no sirree bub. He’s learned his lesson.
Zuzu @ 10:“Hillary is not her husband, first off. Let’s just please kill that one now; it’s one of the most misogynist tropes out there, treating a woman as a mere appendage of her husband (and before you start the argument that she’s running on Bill’s record: she’s not. She’s running on what *she* did during Bill’s administration).”
Thanks for that distinction. I think I got it: any accomplishment from the Clinton administration Hilary gets to share the credit for; any failure is Bill’s and Bill’s alone. To deviate from that view is to be misogynistic. Got it. Thanks for clearing that up.
And all this time I thought her grossly incompetent handling of the Health Care Task Force was her fault. Now I find out she played no part in it. But performing ceremonial duties overseas? They make her a veritable George Marshall.