Cross posted in my blog.
As anyone with a television has heard by now, the desperate Clinton campaign is throwing allegations of plagiarism at Barack Obama.
They deviously and deceptively avoid the facts that:
1.) Mass. Gov. Deval Patrick, whose words Obama is accused of "stealing," is a friend of Obama’s who endorsed Obama and actually encouraged Obama to use those words in his speech.
2.) Deval has spoken to the press, defending Obama’s use of his words, stating: "I’ve known Barack 15 years. We’ve talked a good deal. I fully expected he would sustain a charge at some point, trying to belittle his ability to motivate people. I got the same attack [in his gubernatorial race]."
3.) One of Bill Clinton’s own speechwriters, David Kusnet, calls the Clinton campaign’s charges "silly." He told the The New Republic, "Barack Obama’s greatest strength is the originality of his rhetoric."
This is an undeniably Rovian tactic by the Clinton campaign.
Karl Rove and Bush Co. defeated John Kerry in 2004 not by attacking his weaknesses, but by attacking his strengths. Kerry’s strength was his military service. Rove and Bush turned that against Kerry, asserting through their Swift Boat mouthpiece that he had lied about certain details of his time in the military. They questioned his dedication, his patriotism, his loyalty. How a candidate who never served a day in the military had the nerve, the audacity to tear down the character of a man ten thousand times braver and more patriotic will never sit with me.
And here, we have a man whose speeches lift people of all ages, races, walks of life and inspires them. Because Hillary does not have that charisma, she is tearing down Obama’s.
Let’s not forget that when she calls herself the "Comeback Kid," she is, by her campaign’s definition, plagiarizing her husband.
Let’s not forget that she has used Barack Obama’s famous rallying cry, "Fired Up and Ready to Go" without attributing it to the little old woman in the South who inspired Barack with her words.
Let’s not forget that while Barack Obama and John Edwards and even Mitt Romney campaigned on a platform of change, Hillary campaigned on experience, until it became clear that exit polls indicated change was beating experience nearly two-to-one in some states.
Tolerating Hillary’s ridiculous allegations against Obama is no different than welcoming Rovian politics into the Democratic party with open arms.
The word for what Hillary is doing isn’t plagiarism; it’s Rovism. And to me, that’s a far more heinous crime than using the words of a friend to inspire a nation.