Behind the Ad: Karl Rove's first shameless attack on Clinton (there will be more)
By Richard K. Barry
(Another installment in our extensive "Behind the Ad" series.)
Who: American Crossroads (AKA Karl Rove)
Where: Web ad
What's going on: In what the New York Times is calling the first attack ad of the 2016 presidential campaign, American Crossroads accuses Hillary Clinton of mishandling the Benghazi killings.
I think we can all agree that the administration's initial response to the attack was inept. Susan Rice put too much emphasis on the internet anti-Islam video as a possible cause when in fact it "turned out that the killers used protests over the video to launch a pre-planned attack."
As Andrew Rosenthal of the Times writes, this does not amount to a coverup, as Republicans love to say, but rather is simply a matter of poor communications.
And the other thing Republican love to hammer away at is the "pointless argument over whether the administration labeled the attacks “terrorism” early enough and often enough."
Having no argument has never stopped these people from arguing, and so it goes.
The idiots at Fox have been saying all week that this is worse than Watergate because no one died due to Nixon's subversion of democracy. It does make me ask about all those who died because Bush lied about WMD in Iraq. I guess that doesn't count.
Brace yourselves. Rosenthal is right when he says:
(Cross-posted at Phantom Public.)
(Another installment in our extensive "Behind the Ad" series.)
Who: American Crossroads (AKA Karl Rove)
Where: Web ad
What's going on: In what the New York Times is calling the first attack ad of the 2016 presidential campaign, American Crossroads accuses Hillary Clinton of mishandling the Benghazi killings.
I think we can all agree that the administration's initial response to the attack was inept. Susan Rice put too much emphasis on the internet anti-Islam video as a possible cause when in fact it "turned out that the killers used protests over the video to launch a pre-planned attack."
As Andrew Rosenthal of the Times writes, this does not amount to a coverup, as Republicans love to say, but rather is simply a matter of poor communications.
And the other thing Republican love to hammer away at is the "pointless argument over whether the administration labeled the attacks “terrorism” early enough and often enough."
Having no argument has never stopped these people from arguing, and so it goes.
The idiots at Fox have been saying all week that this is worse than Watergate because no one died due to Nixon's subversion of democracy. It does make me ask about all those who died because Bush lied about WMD in Iraq. I guess that doesn't count.
Brace yourselves. Rosenthal is right when he says:
Mr. Rove built his reputation on smear tactics and the politics of fear. If he’s willing to go this far in an attack ad on Mrs. Clinton before she even says she’s running for president, can you imagine what an actual campaign will be like?
(Cross-posted at Phantom Public.)
Labels: 2016 Presidential election, Benghazi, Hillary Clinton, Karl Rove
posted by Richard K. Barry at
9:19 AM
2 Comments:
John Dean wrote a book called Worse Than Watergate about the Bush administration. Every time I see some recent reporting using that phrase, I think of the book. I think they ought to pay Dean royalties. Watergate is a poor scandal as far as I'm concerned. Nixon himself did much worse. The "no one died" with Watergate argument is also silly. But then the whole thing makes no sense. The Republicans have no real issues to talk about so they take the smallest things and talk them to death.
By
Frank Moraes, at 12:34 PM
"they take the smallest things and talk them to death."
A smokescreen, I think. Something to add to the other media distractive obsessions so that the real goals are obscured or at least not openly discussed.
Was this a miscommunication on the same level as the ignored warning about Osama planning an attack?
Hell no. It's just like concocting a Whitewater scandal to parry the Watergate scandal. It's just another false comparison used as a defense. It's long been a part of their MO.
By
Capt. Fogg, at 11:08 AM
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