The timing is remarkable. Just as Hillary Clinton wraps up her presidential campaign, John McCain’s team decides that she wasn’t such a bad candidate after all. Remarkable.
Late yesterday, about four hours after Clinton suspended her campaign and threw her support to Barack Obama, Michael Goldfarb, the official McCain blogger, posted a picture of McCain and Clinton together, over a complimentary post.
Senator Clinton has really grown on us over here [at McCain campaign headquarters] over the past few months. She ran an impressive campaign, and proved herself to be an impressive candidate and as John McCain has said, inspired a generation of women. Ultimately, and ironically, it seems she fell victim to a vast left-wing conspiracy that resented her generally centrist foreign policy views (early support for the Iraq war, support for Kyl-Lieberman, unwavering support for Israel, etc.). […]
Senator Clinton also didn’t mention John McCain once during her speech. This came as something of a surprise over here, and a pleasant one at that. But it’s clear that John McCain and Hillary Clinton respect each other — and there is a genuine affection for her here at McCain HQ.
First, Clinton’s foreign-policy views were plenty progressive, and her condemnation of the Bush/McCain vision of the world was sweeping and sincere. Trying to characterize Hillary Clinton as someone vaguely sympathetic to McCain’s neocon worldview is ridiculous.
Second, there are plenty of reasons to explain why Clinton came up just short of winning the nomination, but a “vast left-wing conspiracy” that “resented” Clinton’s “unwavering support for Israel” isn’t one of them. For those of who’ve watched the Democratic race over the last year, can anyone think of a serious effort to criticize Clinton over her policy towards Israel? In a way that actually affected the race?
And third, it’s interesting that Clinton has “grown on” the McCain gang now, because the senator and his team have been trashing her for quite a while.
It’s one of the ironies of the notion that some ardent Clinton backers would consider backing McCain — they’re open to backing a conservative Republican who’s been belligerent, and times even vicious, towards the Democratic candidate they support.
For example, last October, in one of his first television campaign ads, McCain mocked Clinton over an earmark she supported, insisting that her spending priorities make her unfit to be president.
Indeed, throughout 2007, when McCain assumed Clinton would be the Democratic nominee, he used quite a few of his debate appearances to trash Clinton. In a May 2007 debate, McCain admonished Clinton for wanting to make the Supreme Court “take a very sharp turn to the left.” In a June 2007 debate, McCain condemned Clinton’s approach to the war in Iraq, insisting she “doesn’t understand” the conflict. In a January 2008 debate, McCain said Clinton wants to “wave the white flag of surrender” and produce a victory for al Qaeda.
And in November 2007, when a supporter asked a question that characterized Clinton as “a bitch,” John McCain praised this as “an excellent question.”
And as recently as a few weeks ago, McCain adviser Alex Castellanos appeared on CNN, also characterizing Clinton as “a bitch.”
McCain’s disdain for the Clintons is not limited to the campaign, either. It was McCain, for example, who voted (twice) to remove Bill Clinton from office over the Lewinsky scandal, backing both articles of impeachment.
Even more painfully, in 1998, McCain appeared before a bunch of Republican fat-cats, where he told a nasty, tasteless joke about Chelsea Clinton, describing her as “ugly.”
But even after all of this, the McCain campaign now wants us to believe Clinton has “grown on” them, and that “there is a genuine affection for her here at McCain HQ.”
It’s as if the McCain campaign believes we’re all blithering idiots with no memory at all.