As Bosniagate continues to be in the news, the Hillary Clinton campaign is doing everything it can to keep Clinton's other foreign policy "credentials" from coming under other scrutiny.
Bosniagate exploded because there was video proof: easily played clips and soundbites for mass public consumption; but the scandal that really started closer scrutiny of Hillary's foreign policy record was that of her role in the Northern Ireland peace process.
The Clinton campaign was obviously not happy about this, and they pushed back immediately. But now, with her foreign policy record in the glare of the media spotlight, her campaign has decided that's not enough.
James Rubin went on record with MSNBC, in an interview with Andrea Mitchell, calling Lord Trimble a sexist "crankpot."
More below the thin orange line...
On 3/5/08, Lord Trimble of Lisnagarvey (formerly David Trimble) gave an interview where he said:
Hillary Clinton had no direct role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland and is a "wee bit silly" for exaggerating the part she played, according to Lord Trimble of Lisnagarvey, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and former First Minister of the province.
[snip]
"I don’t know there was much she did apart from accompanying Bill [Clinton] going around," he said. Her recent statements about being deeply involved were merely "the sort of thing people put in their canvassing leaflets" during elections. "She visited when things were happening, saw what was going on, she can certainly say it was part of her experience. I don’t want to rain on the thing for her but being a cheerleader for something is slightly different from being a principal player."
Who is David Trimble? Here's a refresher:
William David Trimble, Baron Trimble...is a politician from Northern Ireland who served as leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) and the first First Minister of Northern Ireland. He shared the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize with John Hume of the Social Democratic and Labour Party.
[snip]
On 6 June 2006 he became a member of the House of Lords as The Right Honourable William David Trimble by the name, style and title of Baron Trimble, of Lisnagarvey in the County of Antrim.
[snip]
Trimble at first opposed the appointment of former US Senator George J. Mitchell as the chairman of the multi-party talks which resulted in the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement (GFA) of 1998. Trimble was subsequently seen as instrumental in getting his party to accept the accord. Later in 1998, Trimble and John Hume were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to find a peaceful solution to the conflict in Northern Ireland
The Telegraph has the details on this latest outburst from a Clinton Surrogate.
Attempting to discredit Trimble's remarks, James Rubin stated in the interview:
Mitchell: "As you know, there are others, like David Trimble, who disagree."
Rubin: "I’ve met David Trimble. And he’s pretty much the only one. He’s a Protestant, they traditionally go with the Conservatives. I think we have a John Hume, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, who said..."
Mitchell: "It was David Trimble who shared in that prize, Jamie."
Rubin: "Right, and I know these people. I’ve been living over there. David Trimble is a crankpot and what he said about her was demeaning. He said, ‘Oh well, maybe she accompanied her husband on a couple of trips’. As a woman, Andrea, I would think you would recognise when somebody is trying to demean the activities of a woman. She was an important First Lady in foreign policy. I know. I was in that administration and we understood she was not serving tea and cookies, she played a significant role."
[Emphasis mine]
So it's not an issue where she lied or exaggerated, it's not an issue of having "misspoken," obviously the crankpot Irish Protestant who actually did help negotiate Irish peace is a sexist.
Toby Harnden, the blogger, has this take:
Rubin also came dangerously close to suggesting that it is only Irish Catholics who matter, saying he was "pretty much the only one" questioning Hillary’s Irish credentials. "He’s a Protestant, they traditionally go with the Conservatives." Well, it’s not true that Trimble (now a Conservative member of the House of Lords) is the only one scratching his head about Hillary’s self-proclaimed Irish peace credentials.
Of course, this is quite false. There have been several other people who have supported Trimble's version of events:
Maybe it’s the green mist that descends each year as St Patrick’s Day approaches. By the time this election is over, it seems that Hillary Clinton will be claiming to have ended 800 years of bloody history by single-handedly bringing together Northern Ireland’s warring factions together and personally gathering up all the weapons and decommissioning them.
Greg Craig, an Obama foreign policy adviser and senior State Department official during the first (and, let’s face it, probably only) Clinton administration, told me that it would be a stretch to put Hillary in the top 20.
The historian Tim Pat Coogan told The Chicago Tribune: "It was a nice thing to see her there, with the women's groups. It helped, I suppose. But it was ancillary to the main thing. It was part of the stage effects, the optics."
This seems to fit the pattern the Clinton campaign uses with people it doesn't need any more, like Bill Richardson. They've now outlived their usefulness, so let's throw them under the bus.
Is this also what foreign policy would be like in a second Clinton administration? You're either with us or against us?
Where have we heard that before?
And what the hell is a "crankpot?"
Here's the video. Rubin's tirade starts at about 5:30.