Kristol recommends the ‘politics of fear’

While Clinton has accused Obama of using Rove-like tactics, it will be interesting to see whether she takes Kristol’s advice.

Just remember – this is the same corporate media that told us over and over again that Americans would rather have a beer with an AWOL, obnoxious alcoholic/cocaine addict instead of other thoughtful and reflective men.

‘Twas a lie then and they are still lying now.

In related news, Dick Cheney recommended something secretive, Karl Rove recommended attacking everyone’s patriotism, the president recommended something incompetent, and John McCain recommended something incoherent and then denied making the recommendation a few minutes later….

And…

Jack Kingston (R-GA) recommended claiming that Barack Obama refuses to say the pledge of allegiance to the American flag. [http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/179868.php]

I want to bring Jack down…. it a throat under my foot sort of way.
So put your collective liberal heads together and figure a way to knock this prick into the cold mud.

Steve, you’re giving aid and comfort to our enemies.

The thing is, Hillary and her supporters already have been engaging in fear mongering; just not to the level Kristol would prefer. Almost all of their criticism of Obama is that he’s untested and might turn out to be incompetent, and perhaps a GOP flunky. And that all his rhetoric is just empty and that he might not be able to implement his plans. Basically, it all comes down to “What if” scenerios that imagine everything will turn out for the worst as a way to undermine support for him.

For our side, we do the same thing. We suggest that Hillary is widely hated by many people, including the media and independents, and that she’ll spend all her time defending against old attacks from them. We also suggest that she’ll triangulate every issue in a poll-tested way that will win personal victories for her at the expense of longterm strategic goals. And we also suggest that she’s surrounded by incompetent advisors that are more part of the problem than the solution.

But the difference is that we say this stuff from experience, where as they attack Barack out of hypotheticals. Maybe he’ll fail to implement his vision the way we know she’ll fail. Maybe he’ll get attacked as hard as Hillary would be. Maybe he’ll get rolled by the Republicans as Hillary has been rolled. And the difference is that we know Hillary will succumb to these problems, and their best argument is to scare us into believing that Barack isn’t any better than Hillary. Call me crazy, but that just doesn’t sound like an effective argument.

As for Kristol, he’s not really suggesting a strategy that will help her. He just wants to see Hillary do his dirtywork for him, and hopefully force Barack to start saber-rattling against Iran the way they tricked Hillary into. But he’s wrong. There’s no sign that Barack falls for these silly tricks, and he’d be a fool to take the bait now. Hillary is the expert at adopting her opponent’s positions to weaken her foes; Barack’s the one that keeps beating his opponents over the head with the same positive message he’s been saying for years. They keep trying to scare us out of believing we can make America better and he keeps explaining how he’ll do it. It’s really no wonder why people like him so much, and I don’t think it’s because we’re stupid.

What a cynical bastard that Kristol is. But at least he’s blunt about being manipulative and his only desire is to scare all the poor plebian fools to make them more malleable and easy to control.

But what I’m seeing in people about Obama is not euphoria, but determination. The more Bush era crap that gets pulled during the election season, the more people want something different. If Hillary, at her peril, were to be so foolish as to listen to Billy Kristol it would only hasten her fall. People are pissed about the Bush reign of terror and having someone else pull this politics of fear crap will only make the public more determined to look for someone to make big changes. Hillary would do far better to be the more aggressive agent of change if she wants to right her ship and stay afloat in this campaign.

txpoet – thanks for your ignorant comments – glad to see that all the stoooooopid people are still in texas.

If you could read and do any more than key gibberish (I am sure your poetry is just as crappy as your rantings about issues), you would see that Obama is not a Muslim.

Of course, what inquiring minds want to know (and you obviously don’t have one) is why brain-dead white trash prefers a self-proclaimed “christian” that claims to hear the voice of God telling him to invade countries with lies over people of other, sincere, peaceful, and humble faiths.

Thanks for proving that many of Hillary’s supporters are racist fools that actually support the likes of dur chimpfuhrer.

ALL THE MORE REASON TO DEFEAT HER AND ENSURE SHE WILL NEVER BE PRESIDENT!

What stands out for me is how clearly Kristol admits to using the fear card as raw cynical political bait. Not that it’s any surprise to us, of course, but it does surprise me a little that he would give away the keys to his personal twisted kingdom quite so easily.

txpoet:
You may be from Texas, but you are no poet, and I doubt every other “fact” in your so-called “bio.” I especially loved:

I am told Obama is a muslim, what’s up with that? Scary at best..

That sounds like it was copied straight out of the “Scare the Bumpkins Republican Play Book.” You obviously do not read this blog very much. If you did, you would know that (1) we (people who actually do read this blog regularly) have heard the “Obama is a Muslim” lie before, and (2) we find it stupid at best and (it’s underlying implication that if true would disqualify him) bigotted at worst. So drive on. Perhaps you will find a place where all those “just off the turnip truck” people go to get their political info. This not the place.

Kristol, Limbaugh, Hannity and every other wingnut have been gearing up for Hillary’s run for eighty years. Obama’s success is screwing things up things up for them. No Vince Foster, no Whitewater, no Marc Rich, no New Square Four, and so and so on.

sorry OT but

While the Oscars were on this story ran on 60 Minutes about Former Governor Don Siegelman who was railroaded into federal prison by the Rove machine.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/02/21/60minutes/main3859830.shtml

If there’s anyone left at the Grey Lady with an ounce of self-respect, they must wince when they see “New York Times columnist” in front of “Bill Kristol”. The man doesn’t even make an effort to hide his contempt for the voters, whom he plainly (and often, accurately, which makes it none the less reprehensible) regards as ignorant dimwits who can be easily terrified and manipulated with a well-placed “booga booga!!!”

If you want to imagine something truly scary, just think what the country might have turned into in another 10 years, supposing Karl Rove really was a political genius instead of a porky nerd with a serious Twinkie problem. Imagine if he’d been able to deliver the thousand-year Republican Reich the nutjobs envisoned. Imagine Bill Kristol churning out his neocon doomsday prophesies, and ordinary people like you not pointing and laughing….but listening with the glazed eyes of Moonies.

While the Oscars were on this story ran on 60 Minutes about Former Governor Don Siegelman who was railroaded into federal prison by the Rove machine.

Great segment and definitely worth watching or at least reading the transcript.

But I’m confused at all these people saying “60 Minutes” was on during the Oscars. Here on the East Coast, “60 Minutes” was on 7-8, and the Oscars 8:30-on. Is this a West Coast thing?

I think it’s nice that, in the spirit of bipartisanship, everyone’s being so helpful…why, even that nice Mister Nader…

I don’t think that ‘txpoet’ is a real Hillary Clinton supporter. Hillary may, at times, mold the truth a little by omitting certain things, but she would not be that stupid to disseminate such drivel to her supporters. I get her e-mails and certainly none of that came through.

txpoet is just another Republican troll, which really doesn’t bother me all that much. If he/she truly lives in Texas, no further explanation needed.

txpoet… if you truly support Hillary because you’re a woman and she happens to be your gender…. PLEASE educate yourself and READ her e-mails she sends with information and talking points. The talking points you are using are Republican slime machine points. Make sure to disinfect your keyboard after reading the e-mails and blogs you apparently believe. Your kids might become infected if they come too close.

I write to you hopeful that you are not already wincing at yet another shot of Hillary Clinton flashing her “solutions” smile or at the umpteenth reiteration of “hope,” “unity,” “yes we can” ™to come from Mr. Obama. A year ago nobody expected the primary season to last much longer than a month, and yet, here we are. It is time for democrats in Ohio to make a choice, to think about what our fundamental values are, and to make an argument for why one of these two individuals hews more to these values than the other. I won’t pretend to be unpartisan about this. I am writing expressly with the intention of making this argument, but I cannot do this without first telling you what I think these values are.
Growing up just north of you in Michigan, I tasted the politics of second-amendment gun ownership alongside struggling autoworkers’ unions, soccer-mom liberals next to evangelical conservatives and a mass of people who really just won’t care until it’s time to pull the lever, punch the card, complete the arrow or, in our technocratic times, click the mouse button. But even as a young man I could always spot a democrat in this crowd, you could tell because they were informed and passionate about staying that way. They were full of ideas that genuinely seemed geared at doing the most good at the least cost, but most importantly, they demonstrated a deep-seated belief that their own personal good is inextricably linked to the good of their neighbors, that each step we take forward we take holding the hand of a brother, a mother, a love, or a friend and that each of these people contribute in ineffable ways to our lives and to their friends’ lives and to their friends’ friends’ lives ad infinitum. In short, I believe that democrats are in possession of a profound social insight that undergirds our commitments to equality, justice, and peace.
At the moment though, our party is at a crossroads. Two brilliant politicians are seeking our support for the presidential nomination: on the one hand a stunningly intelligent former First Lady and sitting senator from New York, on the other hand a bravura orator and freshman senator from Illinois. There are real differences between these candidates, let me be clear about that, but on the whole they share fairly common liberal views. This being the case, it would seem to be extremely difficult to choose between the two. It would seem to be, but it isn’t.
One candidate stands in stark contrast to the other in terms of a demonstrated ability to govern, to organize and manage the massive bureaucracy that is the executive branch, dwarfs the other in terms of the breadth of their knowledge of the issues we face, and far surpasses the other in terms of political endurance in the face of an onslaught of nasty Republican attacks – not just in an election cycle, by for the past sixteen years. That candidate is Hillary Clinton.
I could go on for pages about why Clinton’s health care plan will be more successful than Obama’s, or at least about why economists have come to that conclusion. I could tell you about all the pragmatic reasons Clinton will fare better against John McCain than Barack Obama in swing-states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, and Florida, or about how Obama’s recent wins (well … he hasn’t won in any swing-state) have been bolstered by republican votes in democratic primaries, votes that will certainly not return to either Mr. Obama or Ms. Clinton in the general election. I could talk about the emptiness of Obama’s rhetoric, and the danger inherent in a dazzling, glossy veneer concealing political positions that Robert Samualson of the Washington Post described as “completely ordinary, highly partisan, not candid and mostly unresponsive to many pressing national problems.” (February 20, 2008) I could rave about the studied eloquence with which Hillary can speak about any issue from education to national security to the Gulf coast. I could implore you to think deeply about the benefits of a presidency – and here I am speaking of an institution, one that is highly resistant to change despite what Barack Obama promises but cannot deliver – that doesn’t repeat the mistakes of the past because the president herself has already been there and can see what challenges lie ahead of her well before they become too problematic to be dealt with. This, more than anything, is what I cannot let go of. I cannot be swayed by talk of change aimed at an institution whose very ideological architecture recoils at the idea, especially when the alternative to this is living that architecture, understanding its history, its supports and its failures, taking it in hand, surmounting it, and mobilizing it in the service of all of those goals that we democrats believe in.
Nor can I be convinced by the head of something that borders upon a cult of personality arguing that the role of the federal government should be to inspire me, to fill me with hope. I already have hope in the future of my party and my country. As far as inspiration goes, I am inspired by good public and foreign policy, by a functional health care infrastructure, by the equal application of the rule of law, by the end of unnecessary wars, by a real commitment to the preservation of our environment, by any number of big solutions to big problems. JFK and Lyndon Johnson don’t inspire me. The Peace Corps and the War on Poverty do! The populism of Obama, the much-lauded oratory, the expression and pure pathos with which he speaks belie a troubling lack of concern with inventing innovative ways to translate that fleeting excitement – David Brooks has recently written about OCS (Obama come-down syndrome) – into lasting inspiration, the kind that comes from knowing that the woman living down the street won’t prolong a trip to the doctor because she has no insurance, from sending your children to a school where teachers can do more than drill kids in advance of Federally mandated tests, or, most crucially, from knowing that that fundamental democratic faith in the interconnectedness of all of our lives ended up as something more than a well focus-grouped campaign slogan, that it became part of our public policy, that it was legislated, that it is the law.
This faith is precisely what is at stake in this primary election for the more it is bandied in a fleeting politics of spectacle, the politics of mass entertainment, as opposed to its embodiment in the kind of legislative politics that are Hillary Clinton’s forte, the more it loses a certain vitality, loses its necessity, its real and measurable impact on our lives, and becomes instead part and parcel of everyday electioneering and the culture industries … becomes a joke.
Barack Obama may claim to stand for change, but the politics of insubstantial rhetoric that resulting in no real legislative accomplishment already is the status quo. What’s worse, it’s a dead-end that leads to less political participation, to a weaker Democratic party and to a weaker nation. Barack Obama may claim to stand for hope, but Hillary Clinton stands for the faithful.
We ask that you please stand with us for real, substantial change on March 4, 2008!

Wow, I see Kevin the Pro-Hillary Spammer is on this post too. Unsurprisingly, I feel just as insulted as I did for the last Carpetbagger post he wrote that on. I’m not sure which is worse: That it sounds so stagey that I’m guessing it was written by a professional writer, or that it was written so poorly that the person should have been fired. And the length of it! My god, who did they really expect to read all that? I know I didn’t.

And again, one of the biggest problems with Hillary’s candidacy is that they just can’t deal with the Obama problem other than by insulting Obama’s supporters and assuming we’re all idiots. I fail to see how that’s at all convincing.

The pure irony of this thread is the triple symbiosis between Kristol’s “politics of fear’ comment, the campaign policies of HRC, and the comments made my those who would have her as our next president. LIke it or not, this is a classic example of “Clintonian Triangulation,” in which WJC adopted the message of Gingrich’s “contract with ‘murricah” to envelop the masses in a false model of economic success, while relegating true “Democrat-ism” to the sidelines.

Example: NAFTA. That nightmare was on death’s door when he took the oath of office in January ’93, but in reviving it, he established the foundation for “outsourcing.” He also gave rise to the massive growth of “service sector” jobs (maybe we should call them “serf” jobs). He grew an economy be vastly increasing inexpensive imports of consumer goods (or has everyone never noticed all the Wal-Marts that were built during the Clinton years?)

Example: We grew a housing sector by massively increasing the manufacturing of modular homes (read: two “Katrina” trailers nailed together) that were built out of formaldehyde, cyanide, and arsenic—and now we wonder why so many suffer from chronic illnesses.

Example: We further established the “fast-track” approval methodologies of the Reagan administration in food, drug, cosmetics, clothing, toy, automotive, appliance, tool, and furniture-materials safety.

And to imagine that there are people who dream of returning to these “glory days” is to imagine nothing more than a brief respite from the grotesque vagaries of the current administration, so that they may regroup, train a new generation of economic rapists, and further erode what’s left of the Republic for their own power-hungry designs.

Hillary Clinton is no more about change than the few mere coins you get back with your drive-through-window Happy Meal—but an McDonald’s, the clown is at least honest enough to be a clown, and doesn’t pretend to be something he’s not.

I have never been able to say that about either of the Clintons—and I’m not about to start now.

Dr Biobrain #34…by insulting Obama’s supporters…

Heal thyself.